Blueprints
by chris dee
Summary: Cat—Tales 47: With nearly every Rogue in Gotham up the river, that must be good news for Batman, right? Right? RIGHT?
1. Proactive Recovery

_Chapter 1: Proactive Recovery_

* * *

Many Gothamites didn't even know they existed, these rarified pockets of the world where the subtle and unconscious application of wealth and influence had fended off the ravages of time and change. One of these pockets was right in their midst, only a few minutes from the heart of the city: the Gotham suburb of Bristol. The ancient Sycamores that once shaded Iroquois hunters tracking deer and pheasant had never been pulled down to build tract houses on quarter-acre plots. The roads were paved, but they didn't lead to stripmalls or "superstores." They led, under a canopy of those same leafy Sycamores, to quaint, family-owned businesses like Perdita's Florals and Harriman's Gourmet Pantry.

Mr. Harriman still wore a clean white apron, kept the customer accounts in a handwritten ledger, and tallied them himself at the end of each month. He didn't bother sending the bill to Wayne Manor, he merely folded it in a brown envelope, wrote WAYNE on the flap, and handed it to Alfred Pennyworth when he came in the next Monday or Thursday to do his twice-weekly shopping. Alfred slipped the envelope into his pocket, for he would never insult Mr. Harriman by checking it in front of him. He would open it tonight while having his nightcap with Miss Selina's little friend Nutmeg, and reconcile it with the records kept on his laptop.

Outside Harriman's, Alfred paused before loading his bags into the car. It was a window display of lilies and irises in front of Perdita's Florals which made him stop and think. The rogue themed fundraiser called Gotham After Dark had been a disaster in every sense but one: in preparing for it, Batman had captured almost every villain in Gotham. Now that it was over, the city was quiet as never before. There was still a baseline of muggers and mobsters to be sure, but the day-to-day (or more importantly, the night-to-night) business of crimefighting was, temporarily, an infinitely more manageable undertaking.

"Meals" had returned to Wayne Manor as a viable concept. Dinner _in the dining room_ was suddenly considered the norm, and if Master Bruce expected to take only a sandwich in the cave before patrol, this was acknowledged as a deviation from the established routine of the house and he informed Alfred in advance like a considerate employer. Alfred was not so naïve that he believed this was a permanent change. Crimefighting was not a predictable activity, and he knew before long the villains would begin escaping, or be released, and resume wreaking havoc on Gotham. It would no longer be possible for Master Bruce to know a night's schedule hours in advance. But for now, Alfred had something resembling a regulation household to maintain. With so many breakfasts and dinners, and even the occasional lunch, served in the dining room, it seemed appropriate to restore the fifth flower arrangement to the regular order from Perdita's. So he proceeded into the florist and waited while Edith Mason finished with her present customer. Edith was a genteel lady with immaculate white hair, dressed all in pink. For as long as Alfred had known her, she always dressed in pink.

When she was free, she came up to him with a luminous smile and asked how she could help him today. Her smile was understandable. Whenever Alfred came into the shop in person, it meant extra business. The regular order for Wayne Manor had been in place since the 1880s and required no contact or confirmation: five arrangements, twice a week. one large for the foyer, three medium for the morning room, dining room, and south drawing room; one small for the master bedroom. The manor gardens could have supplied these bouquets well enough, but the Waynes had always preferred to support the town's businesses any way they could. It was a principle Alfred heartily approved of, so he'd kept the standing order intact after the tragedy in Crime Alley pushed the daily running of the manor into his domain.

He'd only reduced the order, removing the arrangement for the dining room, on specific instructions from Master Bruce. The boy was sixteen. It was the lowest point in their relationship, when he was full of plans for his grand tour of the world to "train for his mission." Harsh words had been exchanged and tension ran high in the manor for almost a month. One night at table, Master Bruce set down his knife and fork and demanded the flowers be removed from the dining room. He said he couldn't eat around flowers, the smell reminded him of the funeral. Alfred complied; it was his job. It was Bruce's house, after all. While the rift of that one, bitter fight was soon healed, Alfred had never felt it appropriate to reinstate the fifth arrangement. The incident was just intertwined enough with "the mission" in his mind. Because of his nocturnal activities, Bruce didn't eat in the dining room for months at a time. It seemed somehow deluded to make a deliberate effort to reintroduce flowers to the room.

But now, since the advent of Miss Selina in Master Bruce's life, these small patches of normalcy had sprung up in unexpected places. It was as if, having taken this one step with her and found it satisfying, he would experiment here and there. As long as he was certain it would do nothing to impair his mission, he might even one day consider… Alfred reminded himself that it was folly to expect too much. The present situation in Gotham was simply too good to last. The best he could do was to make what he could of the ideal conditions for however long they lasted, and for the moment that meant restoring a fifth arrangement of cut flowers to the regular twice-weekly order.

* * *

The bats were back. It wasn't the first time Bruce had noted the specific features of a particular bat among the hundreds in the cave. In the early days, he often singled one out and studied its movements, first as a template to model some aspect of his costume, but then after a while he did it out of simple intellectual curiosity. But the notice of a particular bat never lasted more than an hour or two, and if he saw the same bat again a week later, he never would have recognized it. But these two: a larger black one, muscular, with a defect on the right side of its mouth that seemed to make the lower half sag in a permanent snarl; and a smaller brown one, lean and wiry with bulging, beady eyes; they'd kept his attention for a week. They were always together, which made them easy to identify, and they had started hanging lower and lower in the vicinity of his workstation. Bruce hypothesized that it was the hum or the heat of the computer systems that must attract them – although the scientist in him wondered why it was these particular two among hundreds, and at this particular time when the systems had been in place for years. But then he dismissed the thought and returned to work. It was simply one of those quirks of nature, a variation from the norm that might prove useful to the species or might bring these two into contact with some new hazard and remove the dangerous new variable from the equation.

This thought caused him to look away from his computer screen and reconsider the bats…

The Universe, as Jason Blood had referred to it so portentously in the recent crisis, did have a way of policing itself. This simple process of evolution reflecting in miniature what went on on the cosmic scale. Nature was coldly indifferent to the fates of these two individual bats; it was the greater good of the species that would be served or not by this quirky variation. If the experiment failed and the bats were injured or killed as a result – or if one had to venture into an alternate reality and face unimaginable danger while the other watched helplessly, if the one had to steep herself in some goggled persona that represented everything she despised just to fulfill the Universe's aim and remove whatever experiment hadn't worked out…

Bruce stared again at his computer screen. He realized now that his efforts to help Selina recover from the horrors of that dimension hop had been for his own benefit as much as hers. Yes, she had been in terrible danger, and yes, she had suffered more than a little by having to become "that goggle horror" as she described it. But he had suffered too. He had to watch, helplessly. She was in danger and she was suffering and _he couldn't do a thing to help her…_ And he'd been trying to make up for it ever since. He'd given her a jeweled necklace, taken her back to Xanadu, and even arranged the sale of the Gotham Post to give her some small bit of vindication against that paper's slanders. Yet none of it quite managed to fill the void, and for the first time he understood why: she had been in danger and he couldn't do a thing, she had suffered and all he could do was watch. _He_ needed to do something, he himself. Giving her a necklace he'd inherited from some Great Aunt Elena or spending money on a resort or a business deal, it wasn't… it wasn't really him. It wasn't the part of him that had stood helpless in the study and watched as she was slammed into the wall by the backlash of an energy beam. That was the part of him which needed to act. That was the part of him that needed to help her in some way, give her some small measure of happiness.

He closed the duty log he'd been staring at without reading it, and with a momentary pang, he opened a protected file, his private notes on the Sue Dibny murder.

Catwoman chafed at the thought of "crimefighting." The slightest hint that she might participate in such a loathsome activity was enough to set her off on some feline rampage. But she'd done an amazing job for him on the Dibny case, analyzing the JLA security system when he'd asked her to work out how the killer could have defeated it. She'd found the chink that eluded the best minds in the Justice League precisely because she thought like a thief and not a policeman. Later, during the Crisis, when they needed a thief's mentality in order to "steal" Zatanna's powers, she'd said, "I don't know what I'm doing with cosmic sparks and Berliani monks, but I know where I am with _this_. I'm good at it. And I like that I can help."

She might hate the idea of "crimefighting," per se, but she did like using her criminal expertise to help Batman. And that _was_ something that the private, wounded, innermost part of him could give her.

He closed the Dibny file with a fierce punch at the keyboard and scanned the autodownloads from the FBI, Museum Security Network, Lost Art Database, and InterPol…

* * *

The trip home started out fine. The flight from Kauai to Oahu was quick and pleasant, if not luxurious, in Mr. Beku's simple but efficient little plane. Now that she faced the crowds and bureaucracy of Honolulu International Airport, Poison Ivy suspected the trip back to Gotham was about to take an abrupt downward turn.

When she had first arrived in Hawaii, the first thing Ivy did was approach a housing agent. He understood that she wanted to obtain the kind of ultraprivate (and ultraluxurious) accommodations he rented to vacationing celebrities. He was a little confused when she specified that the owner should be in residence, but a few whiffs of moist jungle mist put an end to his questions. He placed her in a suitable house owned by a Mr. Takashi Beku on a gated 3-acre estate on a bluff above the bay, with plenty of lush vegetation and a private beach below. Mr. Beku, after more jungle mist, had been more than hospitable. At the conclusion of her stay, after begging her not to leave him, he provided his private aircraft to return her to Oahu. Unfortunately, while his little plane was perfectly adequate for islandhopping, it wasn't nearly large enough to get her home.

So she used Beku's wealth to obtain a first class ticket back to Gotham on a commercial airline, but that's where his usefulness ended. Of course, she would have preferred another private plane to get her home, but tracking down a billionaire with a 747 would take time. And besides, it was too much like work. The whole point of a vacation was to forget about work… Not to mention forgetting the annoyances that drove you to leave in the first place. A billionaire would only remind her of Bruce Wayne, Bruce Wayne who was so utterly infatuated with Selina that greening him produced no better tribute than a Whitman Sampler when he had presented Selina with diamond cat pins. Ivy discovered long ago that there were limits to what any individual would do when under her influence, but a Whitman Sampler?!

Okay, perhaps she was inclined to place just a little too much importance on that one, minor incident. There was no question that she'd let it get the best of her during that unfortunate meeting with the reporter from the Gotham Post. She'd paid too much attention to her rivalry with Selina and not enough to the precise words she was using with a member of the press. Of course, if some careless word of hers _was_ responsible for a story in the tabloids about Catwoman being pregnant, well, it would blow over soon enough. In the meantime, Hawaii had a tropical rainforest, acres of unspoiled exotic vegetation, and more rich men per capita than any place on earth (barring a few inhospitable cities where plant life was confined to a pocket-handkerchief of a park in the center of a concrete grid).

Hawaii was paradise, just like it said on the brochures. Utter paradise.

Which led to the question – as she stepped into the inorganic confines of the Honolulu airport and noted only women standing behind the first class check in – of why she was leaving at all?

The fact was there's only so much "paradise" a person could take alone. She missed Harley. She'd gone to one of the volcanic museums on the Big Island and saw they had a marbled red and black rock they called Harley Quinn Kryptonite. She'd gone out to see the active lavaflow from Kilauea as it crept towards the sea and discovered it wasn't glowing red like in the movies, it was a muddy grey, and as it slurped along like a burbling slug, it reminded her of Clayface. That miserable plantkiller Clayface. Taking Harley away from her just when she was finally ready to put her Joker folly behind her and get on with her life.

At last, one of the girls behind the counter took a break and was replaced by a man. After he too sampled the intoxicating mists of the moist jungle green, Ivy claimed her boarding pass (Pomona Demeter, Honolulu to Gotham connecting LAX, Seat 3A) and ordered the agreeable young man not to issue the boarding pass for seat 3B.

* * *

As a board certified psychiatrist, Diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, MD, DCP, and PhD, Leland Bartholomew knew overworked exhaustion when he saw it. And he saw it in the mirror. It had stared back at him when he shaved that morning. It was reflected in the glass cover of his desktop scanner, in the reflective white sheen of his Frasier Crane "I'm Listening" mug, and even in his tiny warped reflection on the side of his pen.

He noted the last as he took a reluctant note: "Patient Crane has a point."

Jonathan Crane, a.k.a. the Scarecrow, Patient #68-C240, had tried since his first session to take control of the dialogue. He sought to modify Bartholomew's own behavior through fear, or at least to instill doubt of the fundamental tenets of psychotherapy. As such, Bartholomew was reluctant (he would not say 'fearful') to agree with Patient Crane on any given point, however trivial, lest he find himself on some slippery slope where he could fall into any delusion Crane might propose. Nevertheless, Bartholomew knew that any hope for rehabilitating these troubled minds hinged on remembering their humanity. If Jonathan Crane was the Scarecrow, he was also a human being who had not seen the doctor in many months. When this human being walked through the door just now, did a half-take on seeing him and then blurted "Good God, Doc, you look like death," what was Bartholomew supposed to think but that it was an innocent and spontaneous outburst?

Bartholomew squinted again at his reflection in the pen and was forced to concede that, delusional psychopath or not, Patient Crane had a point. "Like death" might be a bit of an exaggeration, but he looked a good ten years older than he had a few weeks before. Had every criminal in Gotham been admitted in the last month? It certainly seemed that way: 8 o'clock, morning rounds, there they were, cell after cell occupied. 9-9:50 Roxy Rocket. 10-10:50 Victor Frieze. 11-11:50 Patient J… and then, rather than taking a long lunch to recover from that ordeal, he had a yogurt bar at his desk and proceeded straight into 12-12:50 Arnold Wesker, 1-1:50 Tom Blake, 2-2:50 Hugo Strange, and now… for another 24 minutes, Jonathan Crane.

How long had it been since Bartholomew had lunch away from his desk? There simply wasn't time for more than eight 50-minute sessions in a workday, allowing for morning rounds and proper note taking. Bartholomew had even come in Saturday and conducted an additional six sessions. Of course he looked like death. Who wouldn't?

"And that's another thing," Crane said heatedly. "I don't belong here at all. This is the criminal wing, and I didn't do anything wrong. All I did was – somehow – not even intentionally (for once) – scare Jervis Tetch. I ask you, Doctor, what penal code did I violate? I scared Jervis Tetch! That American Express commercial with M. Night Shyamalan scares Jervis Tetch!"

Bartholomew sighed and placed a reluctant hash mark next to the phrase "Patient Crane has a point." He was all too aware of Patient Tetch's feelings about that TV commercial, having listened to him recall it and his resulting nightmares on a number of occasions. Bartholomew was also all too aware that he would hear the flip side of this "hatting" incident in 32 minutes when Crane's session ended and Patient Tetch toddled in for his 4 o'clock.

Those yogurt bars in no way constituted a proper lunch.

* * *

Other than a few days location shooting for _CHAIN GANG CHARLIE, _Matt Hagen had never been inside a prison. As Clayface, he occasionally found himself brought to a special containment cell at Arkham – the assumption evidently being that having your career ended through no fault of your own when your body is transformed into a semi-stable mass of shapeshifting glop must mean you're crazy!

So when he and Harley Quinn were captured during a botched bank robbery, Matt Hagen fully expected to be shipped off to Arkham. Of course, he didn't have to allow himself to be captured at all, there were a hundred ways to escape given his abilities. But doing so right in front of Nightwing, three bank guards, a SWAT team, and a half-dozen security cameras would have ended his charade as "the Monarch of Menace," and Harley would have been captured anyway. So it seemed like the best course of action at the time: he would let them cuff him, take him in, he'd split off a bit of himself at the Arkham admittance desk while they were filling out the forms, and before long they'd escort the "Monarch" to his cell. His extra mass could take the form of Saul Vics (or any other orderly he spotted in the halls if Vics was no longer working at Arkham), and pick up a keycard at the desk. Vics would enter Monarch's cell, Clayface would pull his two halves together, and Vics would run out alone to sound the alarm that the cell was empty, the Monarch had escaped. Nothing could be simpler – except that wearing a cape and crown, calling yourself the Monarch of Menace, and robbing a bank with Harley Quinn was apparently not enough to make you crazy. (Having once been a moviestar and now being Clayface, THAT qualified as crazy. Clayface they would have shipped off to Arkham. Harley they shipped off to Arkham. But the Monarch of Menace they sent to Blackgate. There was simply no justice in the world.)

So here Matt Hagen sat, still the Monarch of Menace and confined to a holding cell while they waited for the FBI to send a retinal scanner because all attempts to fingerprint him had failed. It was a nightmare. Hagen could manipulate his form to fool the naked eye, but it was like tensing a muscle, he couldn't sustain it forever. The more detail he needed to present, the harder it was to maintain. _If_ he could somehow produce fingerprints – which he doubted – he could never hold himself together for more than a minute after such an exertion. The idea of presenting a scannable retinal pattern was even more impossible; he wouldn't know how to begin… No, it was hopeless. He had to escape and fast. It was that simple.

If only he could only manage it without changing shape in front of the cameras.

He remembered playing Captain Lance Starfire (_"A space-bounder with a heart of gold played to roguish perfection by newcomer Matt Hagen" _—Daily News). For the big metamorphosis scene, they made up half his face with green makeup so it would vanish like the greenscreen and they could paint in any effect they wanted. He had to keep that part of his face turned away from the camera until the moment of the transformation…

Hmmm.

* * *

Bruce knew Selina resented being summoned to the Batcave "like a spaniel." And, since the matter wasn't pressing, he squelched the impulse to use the intercom or send a message through Alfred. He waited until lunchtime and went up to the manor himself. He thought Alfred was just a little too pleased that he had come up for lunch unprodded (a development that Bruce found annoying), but Selina didn't seem to notice anything unusual about his behavior. She greeted him with the easy smile that was the norm since their talk after the fundraiser, and they chatted only of non-Bat subjects as they ate. Bruce said he was avoiding the Wayne offices. He denied it was because "Lucius had to be punished" for the disastrous Ashton-Larraby fundraiser. On the contrary, Bruce insisted, he had trained enough Robins to know that what Lucius really needed now was a free hand. He didn't need to feel supervised, second-guessed and micromanaged because he had made a mistake. He needed to pick himself up, dust himself off, and regain his confidence as quickly as possible.

With that noble declaration, Bruce wiped a crumb from the corner of his mouth, tossed his napkin onto the table, and asked Selina to accompany him back to the cave. She agreed, the easy smile morphing into one of feline curiosity. When they reached the Batcave, she curled comfortably into the chair at workstation two, picked two wing-shaped slivers of metal off the desk, and began to play. Bruce suppressed a lip twitch as she turned the pieces this way and that, trying to work out what they were and how they fit together. Then his whole demeanor changed as he underwent what the staunchest heroes in the Justice League have described as "the most frightening transformation in existence." His jaw clenched, his eyes darkened, his entire body seemed to become denser, and those with sufficient imagination could almost envision the mask appearing over his stern features.

He sat and powered up his screen, while Selina continued to play with the batwings as if nothing at all had occurred – which to her mind, it hadn't.

"With all the rogues incarcerated at Blackgate or Arkham," Bruce began in the gruff Bat-gravel, "I have time to look into another type of case. This is really why I began this work. I never intended to – I never _envisioned_ the kind of costumed criminal element that evolved in Gotham."

"Hey hey hey, watch it, Stud," Selina chided playfully. "Remember one of them is sitting in striking distance, _ and_ I've got one of your, eh…" She held up the two wing pieces pinched together between her fingers to resemble a lopsided batarang. "…What is this thing anyway?"

"They're components for a new palm unit," he growled. "They don't fit into each other,"

"Oh."

She put them down, disappointed, and gave him her full attention.

"So this is what you really wanted to do before the likes of me showed up and spoiled your evenings with lots of purple, banter, and fun?"

He scowled and said nothing, refusing to be baited.

"So what is it?" she asked gamely.

"Diamonds," he pronounced with a grunt.

"Ooh," she sat up eagerly. "That doesn't sound so dreary after all. Tell-tell."

He paused, needing a moment to process her enthusiasm. She was excited, which is, of course, what he wanted. But in all the years of study, in all the years of crimefighting, in all the briefings and all the interrogations, the phrase "tell-tell" had never been uttered.

"As you know, Gotham is one of four primary centers of the global diamond market, the others being London—"

"Antwerp, and South Africa," Selina interrupted with a naughty grin. "Yeah Bruce, I have a nodding acquaintance with the international gem market."

He nodded, curtly.

"More diamonds are bought and sold in that one block of 47th Street than anywhere else in the world. Ninety percent of the diamonds imported into the U.S. go through there; a single day's trade averages 400 million. And most of it – in this day and age – is still done on a handshake. If there was nothing else in this city, that's a fulltime job for a crimefighter, right there."

"Pfft," came the unexpected response. "I hate to ruin your plan, Handsome, but I think I see where this is going. And I will tell you gleefully that they don't need you, and more to the point, they don't need me. They've got a private police force of their own hired by the neighborhood association, something like fifteen individual security firms on top of that, armed guards, x-rays, retinal scans, everything. They're fine."

"There are twenty-five diamond exchanges, Selina, how many can you get into?"

"All twenty-five," she answered instantly. "But I'm me."

"And within those twenty-five exchanges there are twenty-six hundred independent businesses. How many of their safes have you opened?"

"I have no idea," she laughed. "Who counts?"

"More than half?"

"Probably," she said with a grin. "But again, I'm _me_. And I have no interest in spending my nights poring over blueprints looking for ways to plug up holes that only I could get through."

Bruce felt his lip twitch in spite of himself as he recalled his earlier thought: _the slightest hint that she might participate in such a loathsome activity as crimefighting was enough to set her off_…

"I wasn't going to suggest anything like that," he said honestly. "I was just mapping out the landscape, laying out the basic facts of the Gotham City diamond district."

"Really?" she asked skeptically.

"Really," he assured her.

"_Really??_"

"Selina."

She laughed – a very particular laugh, a rooftop laugh that he hadn't heard for quite some time – a laugh that nearly always preceded her getting away with something.

"Okay then," she said at last, "basic facts of the diamond district have been duly laid out in scrupulously correct if slightly anal bat-fashion. What's next?"

The bat-density seemed to intensify and, when he spoke, his voice dipped again into the deep bat-gravel.

"Talk me through selling a stolen diamond," he ordered.

"Well," she smiled, happy (for once) to comply with a bat-order. "As you probably know, every gemstone is unique. Hit it with a laser, it will produce its own, one of a kind sparkle pattern, just like a fingerprint. Any stone important enough for me to take an interest in, that visual signature would have been recorded and logged in an international database."

"So if you steal my Aunt Elena's necklace here in Gotham, remove the stones and sell them loose in Hong Kong or reset them into a bracelet to sell in Tokyo, they will still come up as stolen. My goods are returned to me and you go to jail."

"That's the theory. So why am I sitting here instead of in jail?"

"Unscrupulous dealers who won't check the gemprints to verify that any item they sell is legitimate," he suggested.

Selina made a face.

"Well, I'm sure that goes on, but not on my level. Anything _I'd_ steal is going to be valuable enough that whoever buys it down the line will probably insure it. When they do, that means a new gemprint and oh, look, those stones were taken in Gotham six months ago… Catwoman suspected."

She grinned, and he considered the problem.

"Recutting into smaller stones would greatly diminish the value," he noted sourly.

"It would," Selina agreed. "But that's not the real problem with it. It all gets more complicated in 1998. There's fighting in West Africa for control of the diamond mines. Serious atrocities. On his worst day, Joker couldn't come close to this kind of ugly. Both sides start selling diamonds on the black market to fund their wars, and most civilized countries, wanting nothing to do with these 'blood diamonds,' pass laws prohibiting their import or sale. So now all legit diamonds, cut or rough, have to have an ID that certifies they didn't come out of this process."

Bruce inhaled slowly, beginning to see the solution. Selina could almost envision Sherlock Holmes savoring a long draw on his pipe.

"How secure is the database?" he asked finally. And Catwoman's naughty grin widened into the Cheshire variety.

"How secure is anything?" she asked in reply. And he grunted.

"If you have a stone to sell that you're not supposed to have," he began, solidifying the thought by speaking it aloud, "you can't change its gemprint any more than you could a fingerprint, but you _can_ change the information in the database that's attached to the print. You substitute the visual signature of some lesser diamond, which you can then bury, destroy, or grind to dust for industrial use, for the one on the record of Aunt Elena's necklace. So the gem tagged on that record as 'stolen' will never be found. And you make a new print for your stolen diamond and assign it to a record with an innocuous and legitimate-seeming history."

"I salute you, World's Greatest Detective," Selina purred softly.

"Thank you for your help," he said, swiveling the chair to face the monitor. He began typing rapidly into a waiting file, and Selina began to think he had forgotten her entirely.

"Done with me, or should I stay?" she asked finally.

"Oh I'll have more questions," he graveled, his fingers never slowing and his eyes never wavering from the screen. "Give me a minute to modify a few queries and data filters."

She waited. She picked up the batwing whatever-it-was again, buffed its silver surface, and used it as a mirror to primp her hair. Then she looked curiously around the cave.

"Those bats are watching us," she said at last.

"Oh those two," Bruce said lightly. "They perch lower than the others. I think they're attracted to the hum of the computer."

She giggled, delighted.

"You have your own Whiskers and Nutmeg."

"Selina, do not name the bats," he warned darkly.

"I wasn't going to name the bats," she declared with exaggerated dignity.

"Good," he grunted. He could bring Catwoman into his life, he could accept her friendships with Riddler and Two-Face, he could overlook her favorite bar being the Iceberg Lounge, and he could even, in time, come to terms with a stolen cat figurine among the curios in his bedroom. But he simply could not tolerate her coming into his cave and assigning cutesy names to the native chiroptera.

"The black one is awfully cute," she noted.

"Selina," he growled.

"I'm not naming him," she insisted. "I just said he was cute. Look at those ears and that broad muscular chest—"

"Gemprints," Bruce cut her off forcefully. "Whenever I've purchased diamonds or had them insured, I receive hardcopies of the gemprints, laser inscriptions, serial numbers, everything. Once you or your fence alters the records in the database, I still have proof that the stones you're selling in Tokyo are mine."

"Yes, but your hardcopies are sitting in an acidfree envelope in the bottom of a safe in the bedroom. It's not connected to anything, nothing searchable will ever see it."

"No," Bruce admitted reluctantly. "But it's a start. It's a link. The key to most detective work is finding some overlooked link between the person and the deed."

"I always thought Walapang would be a good name for an animal," she said brightly. "I hate giving them people names, don't you?"

"You're not naming the bat 'Walapang.'"

"Do you even know what it means?"

"Yes, it's from Lombardic law: 'to disguise one's self in order to commit theft.'"

"You are a freak of nature," she smirked. "A sexy freak, but a freak."

He sighed and resumed typing.

"It will take me another seven minutes to modify the auto-downloads, search routines, and data spiders in light of what you've told me. In that time, you have a workstation of your own, as noted by the purple wallpaper you've installed there. Why don't you amuse yourself on that and leave the bats alone."

She laughed.

"You cannot in your wildest fantasies think _that_ is going to work."

"We're doing stolen art next," he graveled with the subtlest flicker at the corner of his lip. "You're workstation is logged into the Museum Security Network."

"Meow," she said, swinging her chair around.

* * *

Pamela Isley's unique body chemistry was such that poisons could not affect her. Alcohol could not affect her either unless she made a conscious effort to lower her natural resistance, letting the distilled and fermented essence of fruits or grains do their work. She seldom indulged in this way, but the second leg of Flight 418, LAX to Gotham was such that she really had no choice. Airplanes were pressurized, they circulated the air in the cabin, and it would take months of constant air travel to work out exactly how much pheromone to release to control a single individual without affecting every other man on the plane. If that occurred, the women were likely to make a fuss when all their husbands and boyfriends came rushing up to the first class compartment to do her bidding. So greening anyone was out of the question.

She'd kept the seat next to her free out of Honolulu, but some silly fool at the Los Angeles airport sold this Howard Graff fellow a ticket, and now she had a travel companion for the rest of the flight home. He said she had green skin. Back in Gotham, Ivy had always maintained that it was alabaster, although the effects of the Hawaiian sun were such that even she couldn't seriously use the word now. Looking in the mirror that morning, she was forced to conclude this suntan effect was the reason various individuals sometimes got the idea that her skin had a jade or olive tinge… but for this miserable TV weatherman to come right out and say "green skin," that was just preposterous. LEAVES were green, and Ivy wore leaves all the time. You could see the difference plain as day: the leaves were a deep, rich, Mother Earth green, and her skin against them was a pale, delicate alabaster.

Green skin. Howard Graff. Five hour flight. So she decided to let alcohol affect her.

* * *

There were hundreds of cameras throughout Blackgate Prison. Some were constantly monitored, most merely recorded to an unseeing VHS tape which was archived for four months, just in case, then taped over.

The holding cell was considered a high-risk zone, and as such its three cameras were constantly monitored. It was not a favored shift to pull: low on action and high on paperwork. When something did happen, the lawyers always got involved, and that meant a day lost to drive into the city and sit in an office somewhere, explaining four times to four different panels what you saw and what you did and why you didn't do something else instead. If the scum had a PD that was the end of it, but if they had a real lawyer, the incident always came up at their trial and you'd be called as a witness and go through the whole thing again. This time everything you did or didn't do was yet another proof of the corrupt system out to destroy this poor innocent victim.

So camera station twelve wasn't a good shift to pull. But if you tore a hamstring like Ralph Dixon and were assigned work restrictions for six weeks, you didn't really have much choice. It was fair to say Ralph was just putting in time. He stared at the screen for two hours at a stretch with fifteen minute breaks in between. He calculated how many hours and minutes remained until he could go home, and he was happiest when nobody moved. No movement meant no trouble, no reports, and no workdays lost to lawyers and bullshit.

Tonight's shift was goin' pretty good until three hours and forty-three minutes before clockout when John Doe #4923 started to pace. The guy walked in a square, staying about two feet in from the wall. Didn't seem like he was up to anything, not trying to hide from the cameras (not that you could the way they were positioned, but not all the inmates were bright enough to realize that). No, he just walked east, turn, north, turn, west, turn, south. East, turn, north, turn – and for just – Nah, it was nothing.

South, turn – wait.

Ralph leaned in and watched the feed from the camera John Doe would pass next…

Nothing happened.

He was doing this too long. He must have imagined it. WAIT, NO – THERE IT WAS AGAIN! It looked like the one side of the man's face was melting – just for a split second as it disappeared from camera B and before it turned up on C.

Ralph thought over what he'd seen… or thought he'd seen. It would be a bitch writing something like that up. It wasn't any of the twenty-six types of incidents he was required to report. He was seeing things. He'd just get laughed at. And some lawyer would latch onto it and he'd have to go describe it like any other incident, but then they'd probably make him take an eye test and maybe even see a psychiatrist. If word got out that he was seeing things, maybe all the other inmates' lawyers would jump on it too.

It wasn't something he was required to report. It wasn't an altercation, a weapon, or a threat. It was just a second where he thought… No. It was nothing at all.

* * *

The bats were forgotten and Selina's guffaws, snorts, and pfffts as she read the bulletins from the Museum Security Network grew gratifyingly frequent.

"Bruce!" she called out suddenly, "I hereby demand that you take back every snide comment you ever made about feline logic. Because when I said I was 'out for a stroll' on the roof of the Egyptian gallery, you knew I was just being cute and we both knew I was really there for the golden Sekhmet. But these guys – these guys are serious!"

Bruce made an inaudible grumble, and Selina noticed his scowl had dropped from the sexy disapproving one into one of annoyed pique.

"What's wrong?" Selina asked, concerned.

He tore a sheet off the printer and handed it to her.

"Pomona Demeter," he announced with disgust. "Pomona: a nymph whose merest touch would green an orchard. Demeter: earth goddess of planting and harvest. Why doesn't she just send a telegram letting me know when she's getting in?"

Selina smiled. "It's not that bad, is it?"

He sighed.

"Harley was just sent to Arkham, where Joker is in residence. It will be the first they've seen of each other since she took up with the Monarch of Menace. Harvey is dating Claudia Reisweiller-Muffington. And now _Pomona Demeter_'s plane is landing at GIA in four hours. How long do think it is takes before this all blows up - into something green?"

He flipped the main display over to his grid map of the city and re-added Robinson Park to his patrol route, grunting to himself.

"So much for the lighter workload."

* * *

…to be continued…


	2. Fudge

_Chapter 2: Fudge_

* * *

Back in Arkham. Fudge. All because that ratfink bank guard pulled a silent alarm. Fudge.

At least when she was caught with Puddin, or even with Red, Harley wasn't stuck all by her lonesome. They rode with her in the van or the Batmobile, or sometimes the ambulance, and even if they did spend most of the ride yelling at her for wrecking their perfect plan, she wasn't by her lonesome.

Fudge.

Then, once they reached the admissions desk, Puddin or Red usually went over it all again with the admitting nurse, explaining how Harley had messed up their perfect scheme. It was like reliving the adventure all over again— at least until the admitting nurse sedated them. Of course they couldn't sedate Red with regular chemical compounds. They were supposed to use the special concoction Batman had developed, and if an orderly was new, sometimes they didn't know and that was always fun to watch. It was even funnier the first time a new Arkham employee saw Puddin.

Sigh.

Going through all the admissions processing by her lonesome was so _boring_. Harley asked the admitting nurse to let her dot all the 'i's with smiley faces, and that killed a few minutes. Then she made up some food allergies. She said that eating anything made with whole wheat or barley made her break out in hives, and maple syrup gave her nosebleeds. That made the nurse fill out a supplemental 11-B form with a 46-R green sheet. Harley went back to being bored.

Back in Arkham and all by her lonesome. Fudge.

* * *

Matt Hagen wasn't a big fan of irony. He was an action star. The scripts he'd received when he was working were simple, straightforward, not too clever. Any time he took a project where the plot was more complicated than a beer commercial or the humor more sophisticated than a Bond knockoff quipping that he's "rising to the occasion," a full third of his fanbase was confused. So he'd learned, flop by flop, to stop reading whenever a script produced any twist he didn't see coming by page 10. Meeting the audience's expectations, that was the name of the game, not veering one degree from those expectations, no matter how illogical, unimaginative or hackneyed they might be. That was the key to making a successful action movie, and that was the key to walking out of a maximum-security prison in full view of a trained security staff on high alert.

The irony is that he never could have done it without reading 200 scripts a year that pandered to those numbskull expectations. The irony was that he'd completed his "prison break" while still technically on prison grounds, and only escaped detection now by technically becoming _part_ of the prison itself. The irony is that he would have laughed, except it's physically impossible for wet asphalt to laugh. The irony is that he hated irony, yet here he was, disguised as a fresh patch of asphalt in the Blackgate parking lot while he rested from the rigors of his escape. The warden's car, the guard's shoes, the vehicles for the dragnet, all passed right by without ever guessing the escaped criminal who caused all the excitement was sitting right in front of them.

Eventually he would reshape himself, perhaps as the primer on a visitor's car or blend into the upholstery in the backseat, completing his "prison break" once they'd given up looking for him and scoring a ride back to the city at the same time. Eventually he would, but for now he needed to rest. Reshaping half his face at a time was exhausting but he'd pulled it off, presenting one profile to the camera and another to the guard come to escort him from the holding cell. Down the hall: one face to the camera, one to the guard. Then finally once they reached "Processing," a quick morph walking through the doorway into a fullface Latino inmate who looked nothing at all like Matt Hagen's Monarch of Menace. The guard flipped out, he'd brought the wrong guy – he couldn't have, but he obviously did. It was asinine trying to deny it when the wrong man was standing right there. Plus, when they got around to looking at the surveillance tapes it would certainly look like he'd brought this Latino from the holding cell. While one of the guards on the desk called camera station 12 to verify the incident, the first guard went back to the holding cell – with an escort of his own – to bring the correct inmate, John Doe 4923 a.k.a. "the Monarch of Menace." Matt didn't hang around for the dramas. Another quick doorway-morph into a third guard let him slip away easily in the confusion, but he felt he really couldn't go further without a rest. So he let himself ooze out into a comfortable tarry glop as soon as he reached the parking lot, then darkened to resemble asphalt. He stretched what had once been his toes into a row of orange cones, and waited for all the excited nonsense to quiet down.

* * *

Chocolate covered onions? There was little Alfred Pennyworth would put past the French, but even he found it hard to believe his rival and nemesis, the neighbor's chef Anatole, could be planning to serve chocolate-covered onions. Yet if his suppositions about Anatole's menu were correct, based on the ingredients the odious little frog had bought at Harriman's, then chocolate and onions were the only items left. That couldn't be right, ergo, Alfred must be wrong about the menu. It must be the chocolate that was meant to glaze the peaches and the balsamic reduction would be used elsewhere…

He drew a thin line through his speculation for the meat, salad, dessert, and savory courses and began again, when he heard the elevator that connected his pantry to the Batcave wheezing to life.

"Miss Selina," he murmured, nudging his reading glasses down his nose so he could regard his visitor over the top of the lens once the door opened. It must be Miss Selina, Master Bruce never used the elevator. But then as a rule, neither did she. Yet of the two of them, Selina was more likely to deviate from habit, and sure enough, as the door opened there she was.

"May I help you, Miss?" Alfred asked automatically, although she waved him off as soon as she saw him.

"Just passing through to get a snack," she remarked heading into the kitchen. Alfred followed and saw her take a carton of chocolate Haagen Daaz from the freezer and put it in the microwave.

"Plotting makes me hungry," she explained – if that was really the word.

"Indeed, Miss," Alfred said dryly. "Might one inquire as to the nature of your pl—er, is it really your intention to 'defrost' the ice cream, Miss?"

"Just softening it up," she said casually, then returned to the question he hadn't managed to ask. "Plotting is for a museum heist," she said with a bright smile. "We're doing art theft- or at least we were. Ivy's back, so who knows how much longer the lull will last."

Alfred's vaguely dissatisfied expression directed at the microwave morphed into one of unambiguous distaste at the mention of Poison Ivy.

"I know," Selina sighed, mildly amused at the similarity to a disapproving bat-scowl. She opened the microwave, spooned out a healthy portion of ice cream into a waiting bowl, and then took two spoons from the drawer. "That's why I have to get as much fun into him while I can," she quipped, waving the second spoon.

Alfred said nothing. He merely watched her disappear into the butler's pantry and then wiped a non-existent smudge from the counter.

* * *

Getting into Arkham was no challenge at all for Matt Hagen. Maybe he couldn't turn into an eerie-but-photogenic column of smoke and go under the door like Count Dracula, but he could do the next best thing: walk in the front entrance like Count Bartholomew. The nurse at the front desk did a doubletake when she saw him, and Dr. Bartholomew duly recited his prepared excuse about having forgotten important paperwork in his office and coming back to retrieve it. Except the nurse wasn't surprised because he was there so late at night, she was surprised he looked so good. She said he looked "happy and chipper," 10 years younger than when he left.

Matt/Bartholomew coughed awkwardly and said he'd enjoyed a very good dinner, then he quickly took a keycard from the desk and headed for his office. At the end of the corridor, he turned right instead of left, deepening Dr. Bart's crow's feet as he went, sinking the eyes a bit and darkening the circles underneath. He would see how the guard reacted at the final check-in for the high security wing. If he was suitably convinced that Matt was Dr. Bartholomew, it would be Plan A for Harley's breakout: "Bring Patient Quinn to my office." From there, Dr. Bartholomew would take her to the roof and stretch his body into a slide for Harley to reach the ground. But if the guard reacted to his appearance in any way, however trivial the comment, then it would be Plan B: destruction. He would take the Monarch's form, blow a hole or two through the wall, and he and Harley would hop into the waiting escape van. It was probably the better plan, strategically. A daring jailbreak rescue at Arkham on the heels of his mystifying escape from Blackgate would catapult the Monarch of Menace to Superstar status among Gotham rogues.

But Matt didn't especially want to be a superstar as the Monarch of Menace. The role was a convenience, it matched Harley's theme and let him sneak back into rogue circles after Poison Ivy had him blackballed. But now, Ivy knew his secret anyway, and trying to keep up the charade got him sent off to Blackgate. The whole idea of a secret identity was losing its appeal. He hadn't absolutely decided to give it up, but he certainly saw no need to build up the Monarch's reputation into a Bat-busting SuperRogue.

So, even as he reached the entrance to the high security wing, Matt Hagen had not finally decided which means he would use to leave again. He would let the guard at the sign-in desk decide for him…

Except there was no guard at the desk.

He looked around curiously and then, remembering his character, he looked around sternly. Why was the station unmanned at this time of night? What kind of irresponsible behavior was this from the nightstaff? Didn't they realize what dangerous criminals were housed in this wing? Joker, Scarecrow, Poison Ivy— The last name was not actually "in residence" at the moment, but Matt/Bartholomew did see the unmistakable sway of green-clad hips disappearing down the hall, shapely green hips topped with red hair. That certainly explained why the guard was not at his station. Matt/Bartholomew stormed down the hallway, cursing under his breath, and caught up with his quarry at the door to Harley's cell.

"Ivy, you're more predictable than a Will Smith sequel," he exclaimed, not bothering to disguise his voice. She didn't seem to notice, she just gave that belle of the ball smile. While Hagen was long past smelling, he was sure the air was thick with jungle scents and pheromones.

"Do run along, Doctor, I'm quite busy," she oozed seductively.

He chuckled. Predictable. And what Jameson, his agent, would have called "a one-trick pony." Clayface had devised two separate ways in and out of the asylum and could have come up with a dozen more elaborate ones that all fell under the heading: _Why go to all that trouble when I have two perfectly good plans already._ But this, this leaf-diva headcase that called herself a goddess, her problem-solving seemed to begin and end with: _Find something with a penis and assume he'll do my bidding._ Matt had known many starlets like that. They never seemed to clue in that beauties were a dime a dozen on the backlot, and that no lovely face counteracted an acid personality. They were gorgeous, _so what_, they were also hell to spend time with. And if god-forbid they were famous instead of just an aspiring hopeful, they could be ridiculously slow to realize they were not as loved, worshipped or admired as it said in their press kits.

Poison Ivy at least caught on quickly. He'd chuckled for maybe eight seconds when the beguiling smile dropped into a disgusted snarl.

"Hagen," she sneered.

In reply, he morphed into his sexiest headshot and delivered his most seductive, moviestar grin. He knew Ivy wouldn't get the joke, her kind never did. But Matt was amused, and in the middle of a jailbreak rescue that was fast becoming a sitcom farce, that was enough.

"Ivy," he answered. "I assume you're here for Harley, same as me?"

"How dare you, you crawling dungheap. It's because she was with you she was captured."

"That's why I'm here to break her out," he pointed out simply.

"Well it's not necessary," Ivy spat. "You can leave that to her real friends."

He sighed. It was pointless to even try to argue with an egomaniac. He had tried, in the old days. He tried explaining how his character, Troy Rudolph, identified with his uncle but wasn't really anything like him. He tried to be, but he always failed because he never really knew who his uncle was. His tragedy was becoming a pale, inferior clone of Uncle Phillip instead of being the best Troy Rudolph he could be. Matt tried explaining it, over and over, and each time Cameron just repeated that one pathetic line from the opening monologue. "I'm a lot like my uncle." One stupid line. Yes, Troy _ thought_ that. He was _wrong_. That was the _whole point_… After weeks of fighting over it, Matt finally gave up. Cameron would never understand the essence of the story he was telling. Matt just let him babble on in his ignorance, and when the cameras rolled, Matt played the scene his way. Cameron would yell for a while, then "Take two" and Matt played it his way again. Eventually Cameron got tired howling at the moon, looked at his schedule, looked at his budget, and moved on.

Of course, Ivy was not likely to tire quickly, and eventually the Arkham day shift would come in. A compromise might be in order.

"Why don't we let Harley decide," he suggested. It was a risk. Harley could be a bit of a flake, and letting her make decisions in the middle of a crime is what brought Nightwing and a SWAT team into what should have been a simple bank robbery. But anything was better than going ten rounds with Cameron-in-Leaves. So they opened the cell door – using the keycard _Ivy_ had taken from Saul Vics and **_not_** the one Matt grabbed at the front desk. Ivy had insisted on that, and Matt just sighed, not caring. Manufacturing pointless, petty victories; Cameron all over again—

That was as far as his thoughts progressed before the lock released and the door opened. Then Ivy could enjoy one final, petty, manufactured victory in that she realized a full 3 seconds before Hagen did that Harley Quinn's cell was empty.

* * *

Catwoman did not patrol like some crimefighting do-gooder. She made that more than clear on a number of occasions. She would take a mild interest in Bruce's work _as Bruce's work_, but that's as far it went. She liked watching him work. He was in costume, apart from the cowl, and stood before a large, holographic map of the city, tapping instructions into a hand-held unit to plan out his route for the night.

It was interesting that he'd assigned Robin and Batgirl to follow Ivy from the airport. It was a surveillance exercise, he said, good experience for them but a low priority in terms of the Mission. Ivy would likely go to Robinson Park, Riverside Park, or else to her greenhouse. They were to note which, log it, and when the inevitable Poison Ivy incident occurred, Batman would know the location of her current hideout. It turned out to be the greenhouse, so he was adding that neighborhood to his patrol route.

There had been an escape from Blackgate. Not an alpha-threat rogue, but Batman would examine the facility all the same. What one man could do, another could do. The Monarch of Menace was not the priority so much as finding the hole in the prison's security and closing it before a more dangerous inmate exploited it. So Blackgate was added to the night's itinerary as well. Selina watched, feigning a mild interest as Bruce tapped his palm control with a stylus and this second location lit up on the hologram.

Then he looked at her, his lip twitched, and he tapped the stylus once more. An uptown building which occupied a full city block in the heart of "Museum Mile" was suddenly outlined in vivid purple.

Selina licked her lips.

"I'm back in the top ten?" she asked with a naughty grin.

"After early patrol and these stops in the Flower district and Blackgate, you'll resume my 'lesson' in the finer points of art theft," he graveled.

"I like the sound of that," she purred.

"I figured you would," he grunted.

* * *

"VICS!" Poison Ivy bellowed. Her voice echoed off the walls of the guards' break room, and Matt Hagen tried vainly to shush her. Failing that, he expanded himself to temporarily create a wall of thick, foamy baffling to keep the sound from traveling further. Luckily, Saul Vics was still in Ivy's thrall and no one else seemed to have heard the disturbance. Now that they'd found Vics, Clayface glurped, melted and drooped back into his natural state. Saul Vics didn't seem to notice. He only stared adoringly at Ivy.

"Where is Harley?" she asked imperiously. "Why isn't she in her cell?"

"She's in the supply closet with Joker," Vics answered, happy he could provide the information his goddess wanted.

Ivy looked at Clayface and Clayface looked at Ivy.

"How in Spielberg's name did that happen?" Clayface roared.

Saul Vics had no interest in pleasing the oversized mound of goo, so he gave no answer.

"How in Gaia's name did that happen?" Ivy translated.

Saul Vics paused. He was still proud that he was able to answer his goddess's questions, but he was troubled that the answer might displease her. Still, he had no choice but to give her all the information he could, so he told the story, such as it was: Patient J had been despondent ever since Batman brought him in. He was allowed into the common room for an hour each day in the hopes that social interaction might bring him out of his depression. Patient Quinn had been kept in isolation for the requisite 48-hour observation period after her admittance, then she was taken to the common room too. Patient J looked up and said, "Hi Harls."

Clayface looked at Ivy and Ivy looked at Clayface.

"Well?" they asked in unison.

Saul Vics shrugged.

"That's it?" Ivy screeched. "_Hi Harls?_"

Vics shrugged again and held up both his index fingers, evidently representing Joker and Harley, and illustrated the ending of the story with a sideways movement of the Harley finger to swing swiftly into contact with the Joker finger, punctuated by a noise that sounded something like "PTOING."

"Hi Harls, _Ptoing?_" Ivy gasped, appalled.

"Hi Harls, _Ptoing_?" Clayface repeated, aghast.

"Might have been 'hey,'" Saul Vics offered. "Hi or Hey. 'Hey Harley.' Yeah, I think that was it. 'Hey Harley. '"

"AAAAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHH!" Ivy screamed, wheeling on Clayface and pounding fiercely into his chest. Circles rippled outward from the point of impact as his mass absorbed the force of the hit. He felt no pain, and his balance was undisturbed, so for several seconds he didn't react. Ivy hit him again. And again. And again. After several repetitions, she stepped back and kicked him squarely in the crotch. This time the ripple effect stretched upward as his mass redistributed itself.

"Let me guess, this is my fault too," he said dryly.

The line was perfectly timed and magnificently delivered, as from an actor with considerable comedic talents he never got to use. But it brought nothing but another primal scream from Ivy, ravings that Harley was back with Joker because 'fertilizer fred' let her get captured, mad scratching at his person and chunkfuls of mud being flung into the wall, and finally a cry to "HELP ME OUT HERE, Vics! KILL THE SLIMY BASTARD!"

This obviously got her nowhere in terms of bringing about his death, but Clayface saw no need to stick around for more abuse. He's the one who was just dumped for godsake – if you could even call it being dumped, more like being discarded, like having your brilliant and poignant cameo appearance in the summer blockbuster of the decade cut for time and dropped onto the editing room floor – and for Joker no less. And on top of that he's supposed to foot the bill for psycho-bitch's personal disappointments? No. No way. He let his mass soften and grow soggy, so the final slap he delivered would be good and slimy. Then he pulled back and let her have it, a hard muddy smudge of reality right across her precious self-important puss.

* * *

…:She's a criminal, I'm a crimefighter. She's a thief, I am… so completely against it.:..

One of his earliest log entries on Catwoman. "She's a thief, I am so completely against it." Batman had never allowed himself to admire her work – Well, no, that wasn't entirely true. He appreciated her fighting abilities, and respected her intelligence. Personally, he liked her. He was loathe to admit it then, even to Alfred, but in the privacy of his own mind, especially late at night, those sleepless nights in the weeks following an encounter… But when it came to those abilities directly connected to _theft_, that he would never permit himself.

But now, now that no museum property would be leaving the premises because of her activities, he could see it differently. She was so entirely in her element.

"Look at this, I love this," she whispered her lips curled into the naughtiest grin as she pointed to a freestanding display case in the middle of the Egyptian wing. "That's a glass break detector. They put them on all these displays – but _that's not glass_. Museums don't use glass; they use polycarbon which breaks on an entirely different frequency, so when we crack this open…" she paused just long enough to perform one of her more efficient claw-jobs on the case "…acoustic glass break detector doesn't detect a thing."

She was so entirely in her element. Loving her, it was impossible not to be affected by this most basic part of her bubbling to the surface with such passion and energy.

"Now we need to look at some pictures in frames, and we won't find that here, so let's go to the Impressionists gallery. Mind the motion detectors," she winked.

He hesitated, taking a last look at the case she'd opened to illustrate her point and the 12th Dynasty gold and garnet pectoral now exposed for the taking. It was preposterous to think there might be another intruder lurking in the museum who could take advantage of the exposure, and unlikely that a patrolling guard would notice. Still, he placed a bat-shaped emblem marker on the case. That way if anyone did discover it, they would know Batman was on the scene. That should squelch any felonious impulses from either thief or dishonest guards, and it might keep the museum insurance from being hiked when the disturbance was found in the morning.

Satisfied, he followed Catwoman.

* * *

Clayface had no interest in returning to the Hacienda. It was Harley's place. He stayed with her when they were together but now that she discarded him (after they'd been separated for, what, 10 minutes?) it seemed pointless to go back there. His needs were simple as far as "shelter." He literally needed to keep out of the rain, but that was about it. As long as there was a roof over his head, it could be hot or cold. He didn't need a kitchen since he didn't eat; he didn't need a bed since he didn't "sleep" in the conventional sense. He liked having a television, sight and sound being the two senses he had left. Every hotel room in the city had a TV, so he found one that was unoccupied and watched several hours of reruns: Knots Landing, Magnum P.I., something with Henry Fonda as Abraham Lincoln and then some movie with a talking snake.

He decided he'd mourned the breakup long enough. When a movie snake starts taking, that's enough. It was time to move on. He liked Harley, she was nice to look at and fun to be with. But there was no shortage of pretty women in the world, and lots of them were fun to be with. He decided what he really needed now was company. He checked the clock, and figured he could just make last call at the Iceberg.

* * *

Batman stood just behind Catwoman, both their heads pressed close against the wall so he could see the device she was pointing out between the picture frame and the wall. He knew these devices only as unit numbers on blueprints, or safeguards specified in a pdf document entitled "Museum Security: The Art of Alarms." She saw them as a minor nuisance set in her path by naïve system designers who just didn't get it.

"Wireless," she pointed out. "They love wireless transmitters because they'll fit behind the painting that way without actually touching the back of the picture. Curators hate letting anything without a PhD touch the picture. Of course the drawback to wireless is—"

"It's easy to jam," Batman grunted. "Or send a counterfeit signal."

"Meow," she said, pressing a button on a small device Batman recognized as Kittlemeier's workmanship. She was pleased at the interruption. It meant he was interested enough to be thinking ahead.

"Now our guy that set this up isn't completely stupid," she said generously. "It's a hundred million dollar painting, he's got a redundant system in place. So even with the motion curtain disabled, there's a shock sensor in place on the frame. Theoretically, if I take this off the wall right now, it senses the momentary closure of the contact points here, here, or here," she pointed. "Alarms should sound all over the place, right? And yet…"

She eased the painting slowly off its hanger until a full inch of space was visible between it and the wall. Batman scowled at the sensors as if they let him down.

"There's a springloaded stretcher in the frame," Selina explained with a glint in her eye he normally saw only during sex. "It lets the canvas expand or contract with changes in the temperature and humidity," she purred. "There's _just_ enough leeway built into the sensors to allow for it, you have to know _ exactly_ how to finesse it."

Using a blocking technique he'd mastered to resist a Martian mind probe, Batman restrained the lip-twitch that threatened to erupt into a full-blown smile. This part of Catwoman's… _expertise _was so inextricably tied to theft. And yet she was so _good_ at it, she took such _delight_ in being so good at it, and she was so _completely_ _Catwoman_ doing it. He wasn't sure what he was feeling as he watched her, but he was forced to admit that he didn't love her _despite_ being a thief who plagued him all those years; he loved her because she was Catwoman. And this, this ability to penetrate the most carefully guarded perimeter, to slip past the most rigorous defenses and sidestep the most sensitive triggers, to let no nuisance of a lock, (or a law, or a crimefighter) come between her and her prize, this was all a part of Catwoman.

* * *

How dare he? HOW DARE HE!

He murdered flowers. He all but pushed Harley back into Joker's arms. And now he had – he had – He had to die. That's all there was to it, Matt Hagen had to die. He had to die, die and DIE AGAIN! Then they could bury him so she could dance on his grave. Eventually seeds would sprout, fertilized by his worthless body. Every so often, she could admire the blooms growing there and think: at last, he was good for something.

So. Hagen had to die. The question was how? Ivy wasn't sure if he was technically alive. He didn't eat, drink or breathe as far as she knew. Did he have a heart? If there's no heartbeat or pulse, no blood pumping, where do you even begin? He didn't have _lungs_, how do you kill something like that?

She didn't know. There was entirely too much she didn't know. As a botanist, she was an expert on life. As Poison Ivy, she was an expert on poisons. But she had no idea how to go about killing something that clinically wasn't alive. Nevertheless, Clayface had to die. She wanted him ended, permanently ended, and if possible she wanted it to hurt.

A lot.

How?

How? How? How?

How did one go about killing Clayface?

She didn't know. Damnit, she just didn't know…

But it certainly occurred to her that someone did, and that someone was a man.

* * *

…to be continued…


	3. Bragging Rights

_Chapter 3: Bragging Rights_

* * *

It wasn't _that_ unusual. Catwoman's Jaguar passed the turn-off for the Bristol Country Club and continued on to the deserted stretch where the public road met the edge of the Wayne property. It_ wasn't_ that unusual. She almost always had her fill of prowling before Batman finished late patrol. She almost always got home first. Sometimes she'd go to bed and sometimes she'd wait around the cave until he got in. She'd warm a little cocoa on the Bunsen burner, rub his neck while he worked on the logs, or chatter about her prowl. This would be one of those nights. She wouldn't go so far as contacting Oracle to check his status, that was a little too much the fretful housefrau for Selina's liking. But she would wait for him in the cave. She did that often enough for no reason that she was satisfied doing so tonight would not seem anxious, fussy, clingy or neurotic. After all, it really wasn't that unusual.

Technically, he'd stood her up. They were going to meet at Gallery Athena and hit a few of her favorites on East 57th. Museums, after all, represented only a quarter of the art out there for the taking. There were auction houses, private collections, and of course her favorite targets: galleries. Quite often, galleries bought back whatever prize she'd taken, eliminating delays, a fence's percentage, and no end of fuss with exchange rates and Cayman bankers. It was all for the bragging rights. A Catwoman theft was a kind of endorsement. Any item worthy her attention was a piece of unquestionable quality. Plus it lent a veneer of glamour and international intrigue which collectors loved, enabling the gallery to raise their prices across the board. Selina was looking forward to explaining it all to the judgmental jackass. He'd be so grunty and disapproving, and he was so sexy like that. The only thing sexier than Batman disapproving was Batman disapproving and stymied. In this case, once he'd grunted and scowled at the galleries' pragmatic lenience, she could point him to a dozen collectors in Bruce Wayne's immediate circle of friends who went all a-flutter at the chance to buy – or even 'view with an eye to buying' – any painting, sculpture or antiquity with a cat-theft in its provenance.

But none of it happened tonight because he simply hadn't showed. Something had obviously kept him, and there was no predicting what. Anything could happen on late patrol, no matter how quiet Gotham was these days.

It gave her a strange sense of déjà vu. When her relationship with Batman had first started to change, he began stopping by her apartment after what he called his "late patrol." As the visits became more frequent, she'd started to, well, 'expect' him, and that took some getting used to. It was one thing to be _ prepared_ for Batman-the-crimefighter possibly locating a catlair after a successful heist. It was another thing entirely to be _waiting_ to see if Batman-the-gentleman-caller dropped by after patrol. She got used to the idea after a few weeks, but tonight's wait on the roof of Gallery Athena brought it all back: checking the time, musing about who was free and what could have happened to delay him, deciding what hour was a reasonable cutoff that if he didn't show by then he wasn't coming at all… it was a powerful emotional memory, and it left her vaguely unsettled. So she'd come home, parked in the carriage house as usual, and finessed her way through the grounds security. Instead of taking the Spruce tree up to the bedroom, she took the Elms to the roof and lowered herself to the East Balcony, picked the lock on the French doors, proceeded into the study and then to the cave.

The two bats were on their low perch over the workstations and Selina waved at them. She liked the larger one. He was black, muscular, and he seemed to be snarling, which to her mind were the proper features for a bat to have. She took a bottle of water from the mini-fridge and settled in at Workstation 2. She pulled up the Gallery Athena website and perused their recent acquisitions, just as she would researching for a heist. They had a late period bronze cat in their Egyptian section, cute but not expensive at all. Only 8,500. That might be decoration for a catlair (if it really was this cute when she saw it close up), but not worth lugging around the rooftops for the pitiful resale. There was a Horus Falcon next to it, 664-30 BC, nice detail on the talons and tail feathers. Oswald would love it… 45,000. Meow. That justified the trip in, during which she could pick up the cat she liked.

She hadn't been planning to discuss this kind of target-selection with Batman, but since their visit to the gallery itself had been delayed, this would give them something to do tonight. He would probably find it interesting, the (grunt) "thought processes of the criminal mind" (grunt) that led to taking this piece instead of that one.

She checked the time. There was still no sign of him. She yawned, catlike, like she meant it, and continued browsing the website… She found a gold amulet of Sekhmet, the lion-headed goddess, wearing a sun disc…

She yawned again.

Still no Batman.

And no Batmobile.

And the cute, muscular bat had folded up his wings like he was going to sleep.

She browsed some more and found a Hellenistic armlet with lion heads capping each end…

Again she yawned… Where was he?

* * *

Matt Hagen wasn't sentimental about roles. All shows closed, all shoots wrapped. The Monarch of Menace had run its course, so he went to the Iceberg in a new face, a thin, blonde, vaguely artsy-looking fellow he'd seen on the street. The doorman wasn't impressed, so Matt morphed into the Monarch one last time just to get inside. As soon as he was in the door, he resumed a more familiar face, Matt Hagen as he had once been ("Hardly credible as the President, unless all the politicians died out and we were forced to elect male models instead."_—Variety_) It was this face that approached Raven's podium. Matt remembered scornfully how she'd only admitted the Monarch as Harley Quinn's escort. But Matt Hagen, Matt Hagen's moviestar looks made her blush and stammer. She couldn't show him to a table fast enough, a prestige table along the back wall. She handed him a menu and then – like the airline stewardess on an old Bond flick – she said Matt should let her know _personally_ if there was _anything_ he wanted.

* * *

Selina awoke feeling cold and uncomfortable. She opened her eyes and saw beady bat-eyes staring down at her. She stretched, yawned, and stretched again. She saw the Batmobile sitting in its hangar. She looked blearily from it towards the costume vault. He was home. Did he just leave her there?

She stretched again, feeling miserably stiff through her shoulders and back, and made her way up to the manor. Dim light was just starting to pour through the windows. It was dawn. She went upstairs and heard water running… Alfred's room. Maybe he was getting up soon but she was ready for bed. She headed into the bedroom and saw Bruce sleeping peacefully.

"Jackass," she hissed, removing her costume.

She slid between the sheets, too tired to wonder much about when he got home or why he'd left her in the cave. She was asleep before her head hit the pillow.

* * *

Clayface wasn't the kind of villain groupies came to the Iceberg to see. But Matt Hagen was a handsome man, and most girls hanging around hoping to meet the Riddler or Scarecrow didn't exactly run screaming if they met him instead. ("If the real Harry Vincent looked anything like Matt Hagen, the title of_ Harry's Harem_ would seem a lot less ironic." _–Hollywood Reporter_) He found that two sour apple martinis was just about perfect. In the length of time it took one of these lovely Riddlettes or Conundrias to drink two sour apple martinis, Matt could drink in a refreshing dose of their beauty before he tired of the witless inanities coming out of their mouths. While he got no benefit from the alcohol he drank to keep up appearances, a good "shot" of looking at a pretty woman was quite invigorating.

In between groupies, the waitresses Sparrow and Jay were more than attentive, and Raven stopped by his table twice just to make sure he was fully satisfied with the service. It was after her second drop-by that Sparrow said Mr. Cobblepot wanted to see him in his office.

* * *

This time Selina awoke feeling warm and cosseted by crisp Irish linen. She opened her eyes and saw a pretty vase of lilacs on the bedside table. And she smelled coffee.

"Much better," she murmured into her pillow.

She rolled over – and saw the crumpled sheets beside her were empty. Bruce was already up.

"Woof," was her only comment until she'd had her coffee, exercised, and showered. Then she went looking for him. She tried the study first, then the cave, then the library, and finally she found him in the south drawing room looking out the window. It was a nice view of the river and the city beyond, but Selina preferred seeing it from the garden just outside the window. It was the same view but without the windows framing it like a painting, making it seem like a part of the house, Wayne property, "his" city.

"Good morning," she purred, leaning up to kiss his cheek. "I missed you last night."

"Morning," he grunted after a pause.

"Any particular reason you didn't wake me when you got in?"

"You seemed comfortable," he said. "I didn't want to disturb you."

"Disturb me next time," she told him. "I only stayed up to see you."

He grunted and continued to look out at the city.

"If you wanted to go into town today, how about we stop in at a few galleries during business hours. They have special viewing rooms for the serious high-ticket buyers; you certainly qualify there. You can see how they'll bring in any pieces we want to look at, to contemplate in private. It's very useful before—"

"No," he said harshly. Then to soften it he added, "No, I'm busy today. Tonight too. I'll be busy for a while."

Selina was disappointed, naturally, but she didn't want to press. Downtime made him edgy, she knew. And it was possible she'd been just a little too enthusiastic, told him a bit more about Catwoman's world of art, jewels and larceny than even the Batcomputer needed to know.

But then, when she went upstairs, there was an envelope taped to the door of her suite. An envelope from the formal Wayne Manor stationary sealed with a gold W. The folded sheet inside was embossed "From the desk of Bruce Wayne." Underneath, in familiar masculine handwriting, it read:

_Catwoman,  
Please meet me in the east garden tonight at dusk._

She grinned, Cheshire style, and continued into her suite, wondering how such a gloriously strange man ever came into her life.

* * *

Alfred was piqued when Bruce didn't appear for dinner. He'd been waiting for some sort of closure since the flowers arrived that morning. It was the first delivery from Perdita's Florals since he'd restored the fifth arrangement for the dining room, restored it on his own authority. Now here it was, a sweet little centerpiece of white carnations set off by a modest spray of fern. Was it or was it not to be used on the dinner table after Master Bruce had personally ordered the practice discontinued?

That morning, Alfred considered approaching Miss Selina about it, for the distribution of flowers throughout the house was really a question for the mistress of the manor and Alfred was always eager for her to assume that role in any way she could… Yet even Alfred didn't entirely believe this was his real motive for involving her.

It was a moot point anyway. She had returned home very late, even later than Master Bruce, and was sleeping in. Alfred would not disturb her for such a trivial matter. He changed out all the flowers himself, replacing the bouquets in the foyer, the master bedroom, the morning room and the south drawing room. That left only the new arrangement for the dining room, and Alfred felt uncharacteristically tentative as he transferred it to a silver basket and positioned it on the table. It seemed like the right decision when he'd placed the order, but ever since the flowers arrived that morning, he felt doubts. He wondered all day if he'd made the right decision, and what the consequences might be if he was wrong.

And then, without a word to anyone, Bruce simply didn't show up to dinner. Miss Selina sat alone in front of the white carnations, drank her seafood consommé and ate her lobster dumpling in thoughtful silence, thanked him perfunctorily for a delicious meal, and left. He doubted she even noticed the flowers.

Alfred brought a second bowl of consommé down to the cave, the inevitable spot where Master Bruce would be found whenever he skipped a meal. But he wasn't there, and Alfred returned to the kitchen, perplexed.

* * *

"So you've given it up," Oswald observed when Matt Hagen was seated and the office door shut behind him.

"Harley gave me up," he explained with a light _c'est la vie_ gesture. "So I gave up the Monarch."

"But you'll still be –kwak– operating as before?" Oswald asked hopefully, re-calculating the proceeds from Hagen's bank and safe deposit robberies if unhampered by Harley's clumsiness.

"I haven't decided," Matt said frankly. "It's something to do. But I don't really need the money."

"Nonsense," Oswald quacked sharply. "Money is power, my dear Matthew. Money to hire men, to make payoffs where needed, to cement alliances with rogues of a stature comparable to your own." He paused and took a long, thoughtful puff on his cigarette, then continued. "It is because of your stature that I am willing to overlook your attentions to Raven."

Matt Hagen raised a condescending eyebrow.

"I think you mean Raven's attentions to me, don't you Ozzy old sport?"

"Raven is a valuable asset," Oswald said testily. "One who knows how to handle the Iceberg clientele. One of those few people who won't get everyone killed because they forget it's Joker's Trivia Tuesday and the correct answer to any question about coconuts is 'African or European.'

"As such, nobodies such as henchmen, Ghost Dragons, and slumming playboys are not permitted to truck with my hostess. It disrupts the smooth operation of the well-oiled machine that is the Iceberg Lounge." Oswald paused again and preened. "Were you not of a standing within the greater Iceberg organization, you would have already been introduced to other, less comely members of my wait staff, Raptor and Condor to be precise, who happen to be former green berets."

Matt sighed. He saw where this was going and could have interrupted, but it did no harm to let Oswald complete his threat, such as it was.

"It is Raptor and Condor's function to invite certain patrons to the Champagne Room – this being the room where they hit you with a champagne bottle, pour the contents over your clothes, deposit you in your car, crash it into the fire hydrant down the block, and notify the police."

As Oswald spoke, Matt transformed himself in stages into a 6-foot condor, the non-descript artsy fellow with a bottle of champagne sticking out of his head, a giant fire hydrant, and finally a policeman.

"None of that works on me, Ozzy," Officer Hagen announced for a finale.

"Indeed," Oswald conceded, "But that is irrelevant since you are, as I say, of a standing within the Greater Iceberg Operation which offsets the taking of certain liberties."

Matt glurped into his natural state.

"Meaning as long as Clayface is a star that's making you money, I can pinch all the extras I want, eh? You're a prince, Oswald, a real prince."

* * *

Selina entered the east garden as soon as the sky began to darken. Bruce was already there, prompt as always, and she announced her presence with a rooftop meow. He turned – and grimaced.

"That's what you're wearing?" he asked critically.

She looked down, surprised. She was wearing what she'd worn to dinner, black silk over leopard spots.

"What's wrong with my dress, I thought you liked this dress."

"The note was addressed to Catwoman," he said, looking pointedly at the animal print trim.

"It's the east garden," she answered, pointing around defiantly. "I figured if this was bat-business, you would have 'summoned me' – arrogantly – to the cave (grunt)."

"Arrogance and grunting aside, the letter was still addressed to Catwoman," he said coolly.

"You're not in costume either, Stud," she noted with a suggestive purr.

"That's because it's_ Bruce Wayne_ that wanted a meeting _with Catwoman_," he explained.

"Playing poker with Harvey and Two-Face wasn't this complicated," Selina grumbled – mostly to herself, but Bruce obviously heard and he scowled the way he always did when she compared him to the rogues.

"Yes, well, since you mention Dent, the process he laid out for Ra's that time, the way someone would go about contacting Catwoman for a job, going to the Iceberg and sending a message through Penguin… Not appealing. So I did this."

Selina grinned.

"Well Handsome, you've got my attention. After an intro like that, whatever the hell this is you're up to, it's gonna be good. Look, I can go upstairs and get changed if you want, but since I'm not as screwy-schizophrenic as most nightfolk, present company included by the way, why don't we just sit on the bench over there, and you tell me right now what you want?"

"If it were that simple, I could have done that at breakfast," he said, moving to the bench.

"Yes, you could, but we're here now."

He looked at her searchingly, seemed about to speak, but then turned away. He seemed to look around the garden, staring at nothing in particular, but Selina knew his wheels were turning.

"A complete analysis and overhaul of manor security," he said carefully, as if testing out each word before speaking it. "Room by room, foot by foot – inch by inch, if necessary."

Then he turned to her and spoke faster and with more animation, as if he was satisfied with the word-test and was now free to unpack the idea in detail.

"More than the simple tweaks you made to the ground security after you moved in. More than the strategies you worked out for Wayne Enterprises when we had that LexCorp problem. Selina, this is the big picture: manor, grounds and cave. A blank canvas. You can look into anything, change anything – I mean anything – in the course of devising a better system."

"Why?" she asked, the cat's curiosity overriding the thief's delight in the ultimate challenge.

Bruce looked straight ahead, as if the answer was etched in the terra cotter planter.

"The Dibny murder," he said dully. "It's been in my head since the Dibny murder. I believe our system here is superior to the League setup the Dibnys used, but a colleague murdered in their home is apt to make anyone reexamine the strengths and weaknesses of their own personal security."

It didn't ring true. Selina knew this man better than anyone. She wasn't sure if it was the reason he gave or the way he said it, but something didn't add up. If he wasn't actually lying, there was still something he wasn't saying.

Plus, he was a control freak. He was the world's foremost control freak and yet he'd just written a blank check. She could change anything she wanted, _ anything. _He'd repeated the word, no caveats. No "You can change anything at all— except, of course, for the time set on the grandfather clock to open the passageway to the cave." No caveats, no qualifications, and no limitations. Something was very, very wrong.

But then, as if he anticipated the danger, Bruce changed the subject before Selina could frame a question or voice any doubts.

"There is the matter of your compensation, of course." Here he paused and delivered a startling hybrid of the playboy's seductive grin and the knowing smile with which Bruce the businessman laid out the buyout offer you couldn't refuse. "The Catitat is an ongoing operation, after all, and you haven't been working since that Sub Diego job for Aquaman. So, just to make it interesting for you, I have four gold bars hidden around the house, grounds, and cave. If and when you locate any in the course of this project, they're yours."

* * *

Leaving the Iceberg, Matt Hagen could have settled under any roof for the night. All he really needed was a place to stay dry, a roof and a solid floor where he could glop out in his natural state and not be disturbed. Any warehouse would do, any storefront, school or restaurant that was closed for the night. He could even make do with a car in a pinch, although the seal on the doors wasn't as tight as he liked to glop out and relax completely. But he could make do with almost anything; there was no need to return to that empty hotel room where he'd watched television. He was going back there anyway, but only for the walk.

He felt he needed to walk – and think. Oswald wanted him to continue robbing banks. It figured, Ozzy was a greedy little bird and he was making good money fencing the goods from the safe deposit boxes. Still, Matt was ambivalent about the whole thing. He only got into it for Harley; he had little use for money himself. Maybe it was power like Ozzy said, but not _useful_ power. There were plenty of people that Matt would like to fuck over, that bitch Rebecca, just for starters. Get some payback for being turned into Clayface. But he didn't see how any amount of money could settle those old scores.

Maybe he'd read too many of those predictable action scripts, but he just didn't see how money would do him any good.

Still, he said he'd think about Ozzy's proposal. Being a Gotham Rogue gave him a community. He was connected to something, to Oswald and the Iceberg and the freaks who gathered there. Of course he wasn't about to become Oswald's lapdog. He would decide what jobs to do, when and how he wanted to do them. Clayface was his own agent, not an operative of the Penguin.

He reached the hotel and morphed into a blind man with a guide dog to walk through the lobby. He returned to the room he'd occupied before, turned on the TV, and glopped into the viscous state he found most relaxing…

Ozzy hinted that there might be more lucrative work in Matt's "hiring out" his shapeshifting abilities, but again that came down to money, which simply didn't interest him. He didn't want Oswald telling him to go impersonate some judge or town councilman to further some scheme of his own. He didn't want Ozzy brokering deals for him to replace a museum guard for Catwoman or infiltrate an ice cream factory for Mr. Freeze. He alone would decide when and how his abilities would be used, and for what purpose, and no amount of money would tempt him otherwise.

…His personal trainer from the old days was on a reality series. That was depressing. He had to solidify a hand to change the channel. As an actor, he despised this "Reality TV" on principle, although he wouldn't have cared at all if he was still working. As a big screen talent, television was beneath his notice and a few jobs more or less for TV actors couldn't affect him.

Of course Clayface was on that same moviestar level, whereas the Monarch of Menace was a TV player at best. It was time he returned to Gotham for real, not in a borrowed identity, not pulling some lackluster robberies to satisfy Harley's idea of roguedom, and certainly not as Oswald Cobblepot's bitch. It was time to reclaim his position as Clayface.

* * *

"I'll make sure you have everything you need by noon tomorrow." That was the last thing Bruce had said. Like she was Patterson from marketing…

Rather than prowl in the city, Catwoman was spending the night investigating perimeter defenses around other stately homes in Bristol. Some setups were better, some worse, but since she was only gathering data rather than trying to penetrate a particular house, she had time to think. Something peculiar was going on with Bruce. Putting aside her doubts about the job itself and the reason he gave for offering it, there was that quick exit he'd pulled at the end of their meeting. He said he had to make some modifications to the utility belt before the night's patrol – and if that wasn't a second cousin to his "gotta prep for an early meeting" excuse he used to give the bimbos, Selina would have agreed to walk Krypto the wondermutt for a month! And _then_, then right before slinking off to make his 'modifications,' he'd said, "I'll make sure you have everything you need by noon tomorrow." Like she was Patterson from marketing. Very, very odd.

She tried to put the questions out of her mind and focus on her work, but they kept creeping back into her thoughts, like some awful long-legged insect. They waited lurking in the shadows once she got home too, a faint undefined worry that haunted her dreams but which she couldn't quite remember on waking. All she knew was that she woke up tired, and she decided to skip her morning workout. The bed was empty, again. Bruce must have got up first again, even though last night she'd beaten him home as usual. Again, a vague disquiet settled somewhere in the back of her mind, which she did her best to ignore. She took a hot bath instead of a shower, dressed leisurely, and only then emerged from the master bedroom. The first thing she saw was a thick manila envelope taped to the door to her suite, just as the invitation had been. She opened it curiously, and pulled out a number of large folded sheets: blueprints of the manor, survey map of the grounds, floorplans, details of the ornaments on the front entrance and the decorative molding indoors, everything from the kitchen to the drawing rooms, the great hall to the greenhouse. Everything she needed, he'd said. Well, here it was, with an hour to spare before his noon deadline.

Still, something was very odd.

* * *

…to be continued…


	4. Walapang

_Chapter 4: Walapang_

* * *

To a cat person, there could be no better omen for a new project than Whiskers and Nutmeg appearing in the opening stages and installing themselves in the middle of everything, even if they did make it impossible to do anything.

Selina had cleared all her art catalogs, knick-knacks, and Gotham Magazines off the big coffeetable in her suite. She laid out a number of blueprints and floorplans – when Whiskers appeared, hopped into her lap, crawled up her chest, and bedded down on her shoulder. He was a bit heavy, he forced her to tilt her head back at an odd angle, his tail thwapped her arm in an uneven rhythm, and his position made it difficult to see or page through the paperwork she still held in her lap. Nevertheless, it was a good omen. So she put the plans aside and petted him. He purred in her ear and made cat-fists in her blouse. When she decided she'd indulged him enough, she sat him on the back of the sofa, picked one of the floorplans at random and began to study it – when Nutmeg started pawing at the corner.

"Look guys, this isn't exactly like the old days," she said sweetly, rubbing Nutmeg's chin before removing her to the closest catsize surface, which happened to be a shelf on the étagère. Nutmeg skewed the top half of her tail in protest. It was _exactly_ like the old days: Selina-Cat had cleared off the round cool table and set out crunchy papers all over it, then she laid sideways on the sofa against the round hard pillow with her feet up by the soft, square one. She was plotting something for the soft leather suit kept under the bed, and plotting meant a plate of treats somewhere. Nutmeg just wanted to make sure she got her share. The cat explained her position very thoroughly, the top inch of her tail shifting back and forth like a slow metronome until it just grazed the obelisk next to her on the étagère. She was disappointed when, having made her point so beautifully, she saw that Selina-Cat wasn't even listening. She had returned all her attention to the papers. Nutmeg sat and waited. She knew Selina-Cat would never plot for long without a plate of treats.

A catnap later, Standing Softpaws came into the suite. Nutmeg heard the word "tea," which meant little plates of bread and butter, or sometimes clotted cream or sandwiches or cake, but Selina-Cat waved him away. This was only proper, any cat knew the importance of appearing disinterested in anything the two-foots offered. Standing Softpaws would bring the teacakes anyway, and Selina-Cat would deign to eat them as if she was simply being polite to Standing Softpaws – just as Nutmeg would then be polite to Selina-Cat when she offered Nutmeg a taste.

Nutmeg waited… and waited… She was about to venture herself into the Land of the Can Opener to see what was taking so long, when she heard footsteps in the hall. It was Bat-Bruce, of course, for Standing Softpaws made little sound when he walked. Nutmeg watched curiously, for it was unusual for Bat-Bruce to bring treats. She watched thoughtfully, that top inch of her tail moving ever so slowly. She saw a pot and cups, but no plates with butter or clotted cream or cake. She heard words like "How's it going" "So far so good" and "Just getting started," but none of that meant food or play or grooming or nap.

Suddenly, Bat-Bruce did something very strange. He spilled his cup full of dark, inky liquid all over one of the papers. It seemed very clumsy. Bat-Bruce was not clumsy for a two-foot. He wiped and wiped the one corner. Nutmeg hopped down to take a closer look – but then she thought the better of it as soon as she got close enough and her nose detected a sharp acidic smell. She scrunched up her nose in disgust and backed away. She hated sharp smells. Giving up on the whole situation in the suite, Nutmeg trotted off to find Standing Softpaws and get a proper treat.

* * *

Matt Hagen might not have a human body anymore, but he still thought of himself as human. He was still a human being emotionally. If he explained something in terms so simple that even Oswald Cobblepot could understand and then Oswald DIDN'T understand, he felt frustrated! That emotion could no longer produce a surge in his blood pressure, because he had no blood pressure. He had no blood and he had no veins, but he still felt frustrated. He produced a vein on his neck anyway and made it throb; it was almost like accessing a sense memory to give a performance.

Oswald went on, nattering away.

Matt thought he'd been perfectly clear and perfectly polite: He was not interested in becoming an "operative" of the Iceberg Lounge. He was not interested in having Oswald Cobblepot as his director. He was not interested in a more -kwak- "favorable distribution of the proceeds" now that "the lovely but somewhat -kwak- extraneous Ms Quinn was out of the picture."

Why couldn't he make the stupid little bird understand? He wasn't interested in something more –kwak– sophisticated than bank vaults, like trading on insider information obtained through a little creative imposture or setting up some type of blackmail to influence a government contract. It was nothing more than money, money for Oswald, using his abilities to make money for Oswald at Oswald's behest, EXACTLY what he'd just said he wouldn't do. And then, not ten minutes later, "Listen Matthew my friend, I've got a pigeon ripe for the plucking."

So he took refuge in making his non-functioning neck-vein throb and waited for Ozzy to finish his pitch.

His pitch. Hm, yes that's just what this was, wasn't it. When a director or a screenwriter – or more often a director and screenwriter working together – wanted his talent for a project, they'd arrange a meeting through the studio if they had the clout, or waylay him at Spago if they didn't. They'd sit themselves down at his table, whether he asked them or not, and proceed to lay out their idea for a movie. The pitch was always crafted to appeal to him – what they _thought_ would appeal to him – "Why, it's _Die Hard_ meets _Space Tempest_, the perfect Matt Hagen vehicle."

Yes, suddenly it all made sense. This was a pitch. Oswald was pitching him. Like that bit about big business as "a chicken ripe for the plucking." He was thinking of pharmaceutical companies. He thought Matt would be keen to strike at big business, any big business, because he knew only the urban legend of how Clayface came to be.

* * *

This time Selina did not welcome Whiskers's intrusion as any kind of omen. She gave him a perfunctory pat on the head, deposited him on the floor, and returned her attention to the soiled blueprints.

There was one indisputable advantage to having Batman as an adversary all those years: she knew when he was up to something. The loving intimacy they shared today did not cancel out the knowing awareness from yesterday. The way he'd given her the job, fine, that she could write off as a fluke. People aren't robots; everybody has a day here and there where they might seem a bit off. It's no reason to alert the media. It's no reason to declare DefCon-4. Gotham was quiet and Bruce didn't like quiet, he was a bit off, it wasn't a big deal. But now…

He'd spilled tea on that floorplan like a foppish klutz and then smeared the corner even more as he mopped it with his napkin. Selina scrutinized the stain, trying to make out some feature in the smudgy blurs. It was the ground floor, the smudge was Detail D-D, a detailed blow up from a small circle marked D near the southwest corner of the Great Hall. Bruce said it was "nothing." He knew the house better than the blueprints, she was sure. He said it was "nothing."

All the large floorplan said was "paneling" 11 feet, and this D pointing her to the detailed sketch in the corner.

"Nothing," he'd said.

Verbal minimalism, that was Batman not Bruce. Bruce might have said "Oh it's nothing much, don't worry about it." But "Nothing," that was Batman talking.

And she could always tell when Batman was up to something.

So what was on these plans that he didn't want her to see? She looked over other details on the same page, hoping for some hint. There was A-A and B-B, details of other paneling and "fretwork" on the far wall. C-C was the arched doorway to the hall that led to the library. Selina folded up the plans and went downstairs to take a look in person.

She saw nothing more than what she already knew from living in the house all this time: the "paneling" consisted of rectangles of curved molding surrounding rich silk panels. She went around to the library and crawled into the vent, then worked her way back to the Great Hall for what Catwoman considered "a better view." In her mind's eye she determined that she was in the lower Detail B looking through the grate directly at mystery smudge D. It _still_ looked like nothing. Which is, of course, what Bruce had said, and was, of course, a big fat lie.

She squiggled further. Progress was slow. She had to stop every eight feet, disarm an independent sensor and remove a mesh screen that blocked every vent in the manor big enough for a person to crawl through. It took her an hour to get there, but she finally determined she was _inside_ smudge D. She examined every inch of the ventwall and found absolutely nothing of interest. There was no grate to allow her to see into the room from here. She made her way back out, mechanically restoring each of the screens and reactivating the alarms as she went. It was busywork that her hands could do automatically while her mind raced ahead. Without a utility belt full of specialized gear, it was unlikely she was going to solve this with just a visual inspection. Catwoman had her own bag of tech tricks, to be sure, but for very specific tasks: to jam or counterfeit a wireless signal, to record a tapeloop and play it back as realtime, to insert a microscopic camera into a safe and view the tumblers as she cracked the combination. Everything she did was centered around getting in, getting the goods, and getting out. The more nebulous "looking" without knowing what she was looking _for_, that was more in his line than hers. That was a job for the—YES!

She crawled out of the vent and dropped back down to the hallway with renewed vigor. It _was_ more in his line; it was detective work. And that thought of him and his bat-ways suggested an obvious solution: he was sure to have digital copies of the blueprints scanned into the computer. She could view the original file as it appeared before tea splotching by a klutzy fop.

* * *

In his days riding high as Box Office Golden Boy, Matt Hagen would sometimes amuse himself, somewhat cruelly, at the expense of those overeager screenwriters that came to pitch their stories – particularly if they came up to him at Spago and put him off his dinner. "Funny you mention Mykonos," he'd say with a wistful look at a very pretty waitress, letting the screenwriters think he was considering their script rather than the waitresses lovely figure. Then later he'd murmur, "I always wanted to shoot in Greece." And they'd be off on a flight of cinematic fancy, he'd see it glistening in their eyes as their pitch became extravagant and unguarded: _this was it, their three picture deal, come Christmas they'd be skiing Aspen with Nicholson, come Oscar night they'd blow off the awards and jam with Woody at Elaine's…_

Matt baited Oswald now in just this way. A single nod of agreement, the profits some of these companies made -kwak- when their products weren't luxuries like those gold watches in the safe deposit box but necessities for people in need. _Yes, Ozzy, there you go. We're talking about the drug companies. Take a nibble, you think you know the Clayface story don't you?_

"The worst of it is those executive salaries," Matt offered, a touch of indignation in his voice that distinguished Grant Gifford's summation in _Advocate for Love_ ("A moving portrayal completely out of place in this dismal summer sleeper."—_Gotham Daily News_).

That's all it took, "those executive salaries," that's all Oswald needed to see his three picture deal, skiing Aspen with Jack Nicholson – that image was so funny Matt had to exaggerate his glorpy Clayface expression or risk a laugh that would wreck Oswald's lecture.

"Pharmaceuticals are a billion dollar industry," Ozzy explained, as if this wasn't perfectly obvious or perhaps assuming that a body of shapeshifting clay made Matt Hagen stupid. "Any of them would pay millions in bribes to expedite approval on a drug. You could accept multiple bribes as different members of the committee while I film the payoffs, and then we may proceed to blackmail at our leisure."

Matt allowed the amused smile to come through. It was still the thought of Oswald Cobblepot on skis that inspired it, but the fat little bird would take it as approval for his brilliant_-kwak-_plan. Posing as a member of the FDA to take bribes from drug companies and then blackmailing the execs, it was exactly the Agent-of-the-Penguin role Matt said he didn't want, but now Ozzy thought he'd go along because he'd appealed to Matt's special desire to screw the drug companies. Why it's _ Die Hard_ meets _Space Tempest_, a sure-fire Matt Hagen vehicle…

* * *

Selina was just suspicious enough of whatever was going on with Bruce that she wanted to make sure the Batcave was empty before going near the computers. So she dressed for her prowl and set off as usual, then hid near the turnoff to Country Club Lane until the Batmobile passed. She watched it disappear on its way into the city, and then she turned and headed back to the manor. She had just powered up her workstation when that old instinct that saw Batman as a foe tapped her on the shoulder: Wouldn't he have some kind of lockout on the file? Of course he would, he's Batman. He's always three steps ahead of everybody.

She shutdown her own workstation and sat down at his. It had been several years since she'd done this. He had a second login not even Tim or Alfred knew about, triple password encryption:

Thomas  
Martha  
Justice

At least he hadn't changed them.

She did a quick search for blueprints and began scrolling through the filenames.  
W Manor Exterior: Side Entrance  
W Manor Garden and Elevation  
W Manor Interior: Kitchen  
W Manor Interior – there it was, W Manor Interior: Ground Floor.

She tapped the menu to open the highlighted file, but another password screen appeared instead.

** AUTHORIZATION:** the prompt blinked at her.

She tried Thomas, like before. She tried Martha. She tried ThomasMartha. She tried ThomasMarthaJustice. She tried MarthaThomasJustice. She tried every variation she could come up with on the holy trinity of Bat-passwords, but always that damn authorization prompt went on blinking.

She went back to the search results and tried opening a different file. She instantly found herself looking at the decorative molding on the manor side entrance. She tried another file and the kitchen floorplan opened just as easily. She tried another, and wound up viewing detailed schematics for the Batmobile.

She hissed at the screen.

It was only that one file?

She tried another and saw elevation maps of the area surrounding the pond, greenhouse, and garden.

It _was_ only that one file. Damn him. The love-hate that seasoned their Bat/Cat duels began to sizzle inside her. It was only that one file, only the file he'd spilled tea on. It was only that one, which meant this extra password was just here to stop _her_. **_Damn him!_**

She looked up to see if that arrogant bully bat was looming overhead like before. He was and Selina called him a jackass. Look at him, him and the other one, sitting up there just like they were that day in exactly the same spot over the work… stations…

Selina's lips curled into a knowing smile as she remembered that afternoon working with Bruce in the cave. She was a brilliant thief. There were few safes, if any, that she couldn't crack given time. But part of being a brilliant thief was not wasting time beating a safe if you could simply _guess_ the combination.

She went back to the search menu and again clicked on that Holy Grail file, W Manor Interior: Ground Floor.

** AUTHORIZATION:**the access screen blinked once again, challenging her to supply the proper password.

She looked up at the bat, the bat that would have been hanging right there when he set this up, when he set up this password that was only here for her.

** AUTHORIZATION:** Walapang, she typed.

The access screen disappeared and a new window opened – but it wasn't the blueprints for the ground floor. It was a window topped with the inevitable bat emblem and the heading _Project Walapang_. Underneath there was a single entry field and the words  
Enter file number (example: 39115-HK999.9)

Selina stared unbelievingly.

Then she swiveled the chair sharply and looked around suspiciously.

Something like this happened before when she was working. Not often, but from time to time she'd open a safe expecting bearer bonds and a ruby necklace, and instead find a computer disk and an electronic chip. The next thing that would always happen was a garrote around her throat, a clonk on the head, or a spray of gas in her face.

Her heart was racing as she scanned the empty cave, reliving each and every one of those dreadful surprises. The bat above her made a noise – or maybe she just thought it did – and she swung back and pointed at it fiercely, daring it to move. As she attempted to stare down the creature, her heartbeat eventually slowed and a new thought suggested itself.

The password screen blocking that file _ was_ only there for her, but it wasn't protecting the blueprints. The password screen blocking that file was there for her but_ not to protect the file_… It was there to show her this? What the hell was this? Project Walapang?

* * *

It's _The Sting_ meets the _Count of Monte Cristo_, a perfect Matt Hagen vehicle —NOT!

So far, Matt's trip to the Iceberg was not going well. He had amused himself at Oswald's expense, but he was no closer to accomplishing what he'd come for: telling Ozzy no. Oswald Cobblepot wasn't some day-player, he deserved a straight answer. Matt wanted to stay in Gotham; he wanted to run his own affairs devised by Clayface for Clayface, period; and he wanted to hang out at the Iceberg like any other rogue. He wanted to be part of the community. He did not want to be staff.

But then Ozzy was so stubborn and argumentative about the whole thing, and Matt let himself be pulled into this stupid game. Now it really was time to end it. It was fun while it lasted, but now Oswald was crossing a line Matt could not permit him to cross.

"It's easy enough to hurt a person if you can transform your hand into a club and smash him black and blue," he declared – as if Matthew Christopher Hagen needed this pompous, self-important little shit to tell him the simplest goddamn things. "But to take _Revenge_," Oswald declaimed, pronouncing the word as if reciting Shakespeare, "you must take away that which he holds dear, as dear as that which your victim took from you. For men such as these that is money, and the prestige and power that only money can buy."

"Enough," Matt said flatly. It was the "Thank You" after an audition when you _weren't_ getting the part, and anybody except Oswald would have recognized the intonation. Instead the little bird puffed up belligerently.

"It can never be enough. Billions these soulless charlatans use to feather their nests, and billions we shall have when—"

"Nooo," Matt said, letting his voice linger and trill on the word the way Cameron's did with the make-up girl when he didn't like her work. "We won't be taking anything Oswald. I've listened to your proposal and it doesn't suit me."

Oswald blinked as if he didn't quite understand.

"To take Revenge," he began again, "money and a disguise are precisely what you need."

"Nooo," Matt repeated, as Cameron again, but the whinier "we talked about this" delivery he reserved for the art director.

Again Oswald started to speak, and Clayface morphed half his body into a chalkboard and his finger into chalk. I HAVE NO NEED OF MONEY, he wrote in large block letters as he spoke the words distinctly. Then he let the whole thing – chalk, chalkboard, and clayman in between – collapse into the normal-looking body of Matt Hagen. "And you have no idea who I would take revenge on and why."

Then Oswald spoke a name – and Matthew shook his head. This is why you didn't let people like Oswald Cobblepot – or anyone else for that matter – cross those lines even once.

He named a man Matt Hagen met _once_, in Vegas, with Rebecca. They'd had _one drink _at the Breeze Bar before Matt took Rebecca to see Cirque du Soleil for her birthday. That was it. Rebecca introduced them. Matt barely remembered the guy. He drank Campari Orange, he talked about the weather, he asked for an autograph for his kid or nephew or something. Yet all the world thought Matt had a hate-on for Roland Daggett. All the world thought this dullard that wore a shirt and tie in the Breeze Bar at four in the afternoon had made Clayface.

Meanwhile, Oswald was having a nutty. Matt had seen plenty of outraged egos flip out in his day. He'd even thrown a tantrum himself once, when the studio saddled him with a diva for a co-star. His agent said he had to prove he was just as big a star as Princess PrettyAss (as he was calling her by the second day), and since she went and locked herself in her trailer every third scene… So yeah, Matt could trash a hotel room or punch a photographer with the best of them. But never had he seen anything like this in Hollywood: Oswald poking an umbrella in his face, jumping up and down like a stunt man warming up for a freefall, turning the most godawful shade of plum, and yet through the whole thing he never raised his voice. Matt was ready to repeat the sound-baffling trick from Arkham, but it wasn't necessary. It was as if Oswald's dignity would not allow the riffraff in the lounge to overhear his business, or to know that something going on in the office had the power to upset him.

Matt began to regret raising Oswald's hopes the way he had. He didn't come to the Iceberg to make an enemy, he just wanted to do his own thing and he thought Oswald deserved to know. He came to give Ozzy a straight answer, man to man, but then he got carried away and the whole thing spun out of control… story of his life.

He sighed. There was still an umbrella tip pressed into his nose, and Ozzy was still cursing him out. Matt morphed back into his clay state in order to get Oswald's attention. It worked. There was some sputtering, but Ozzy did calm down when he realized how empty and pointless his threats had become.

"I tell you what," Matt offered reasonably. "I'm not interested in the bribes, the insider training or the blackmail. But I _will_ give you the exclusive contact rights for anybody in Gotham that wants to contact Clayface. I'll get a cell phone this afternoon, only you get the number, and if Catwoman wants me to impersonate a museum guard or Freeze needs a look-alike to infiltrate an ice cream factory, they can contact you and you set up the meeting. You get 15 percent of anything that happens as a result."

Oswald considered this…. He asked for 25 percent… then 20… then 17… then 15.5… and finally he accepted Hagen's terms as originally laid out. It didn't matter to Matthew, he had no intention of taking any jobs these setups might pitch him. But Oswald wouldn't know that, the arrangement would make him happy and secure Matt the favored position he'd enjoyed in the Lounge as the Monarch of Menace.

* * *

Selina studied the screen carefully. There wasn't much to go on. A Bat-emblem –which she'd traced over enough times on enough rooftops to know that there was nothing unusual about this one. The words "Project Walapang" which must allude to their conversation that day about the gemprints. And this field  
Enter file number (example: 39115-HK999.9)

"Okay, let's think about this," she said to the larger bat, now named Walapang in her mind. Bruce spilled the tea on purpose; she knew that. What if he'd done it _not_ to hide something on the blueprints but just to make her suspicious so she'd go looking for the backups and find this?

Project Walapang**  
** Enter file number (example: 39115-HK999.9)

That's the part that really made no sense. This entire system was set up by Batman for Batman. He wouldn't need to give himself an example of a file number, he—

"Oh that's good," Selina told the bat, her lips curling into an approving grin.

A good thief never wasted time cracking a safe without first checking if the dimwit owner wrote the combination somewhere so he wouldn't forget.

39115-HK999.9 Selina typed, copying the "example" file number into the entry field.

She gasped. A window opened with the heading for an annotated FBI profile on Garfield Lynns from the criminal database, but replacing the contents underneath that heading – just like a substitute gemprint inserted into an existing entry, just like she told him the day of the 'Walapang' conversation – were the blueprints for Wayne Manor Interior: Ground Floor.

* * *

Dr. Leland Bartholomew had become seriously worried about his mental health. Insanity was not contagious; as a mental health professional, he knew that better than anyone. But exhaustion and sustained stress took an undeniable toll. Roxy, Harley, Frieze, Tetch, and Joker all before lunch. He couldn't imagine how he was going to continue if that miserable Batman deposited one more costumed psychopath into his care. The only way he could think to cope with this mounting workload was to manufacture a coping mechanism, some sort of ritualized outlet through which he could channel his anxiety until repetitious habituation association produced a healthy alleviation transference.

Dr. Bartholomew knew that too many Americans engaged in this process unknowingly using television. He did not approve of it, it was such a mindless pastime. But he was so tired when he got home, he could think of no other activity he was fit for. By sheer luck, he found something called the Barefoot Contessa as he flipped the channels, and in only one viewing he became quite enamored of this Ina Garten. He watched in fascination as she cooked a chicken with 40 cloves of garlic and made an ice cream bombe. At the end of the half hour, he felt so invigorated that he got up and made an abbreviated version of the bombe, substituting the store-bought sherbet in his freezer for her homemade sorbets. The next night he stopped at the supermarket on the way home to buy garlic and chicken, then at the liquor store for the wine and cognac he would need for the recipe. He couldn't believe it. Every night for a month he had dragged himself home exhausted; tonight he was making two stops he didn't even need to. He did try making the chicken but he couldn't remember the details very well. He also missed that night's show because of the stops.

By the fourth night, he had his ritual all worked out. He started the day logging into the show's website and printed out the recipes from the previous episode. He labeled a fresh videotape and set up his VCR. He went into work, and for five minutes or so while Roxy Rocket extolled the joys of X-treme rock climbing, he made up his shopping list. He stopped on the way home for the ingredients, put in the previous night's tape, and he and Ina embarked together on another culinary adventure…

* * *

Catwoman did not want to linger at Batman's computer any longer than necessary, so she closed the Project Walapang window as soon as she found the blueprints. She shut down the workstation completely and retreated to the gymnasium to think. There was a cat's cradle of wire and cable erected overhead for grapnel exercises, and she twisted and contorted through these like a gymnast would parallel bars. She'd swing from her whip-hand and pull her legs up close to her body to clear a cable she decided was a motion sensor, then she would lower to a seated position to balance on another she imagined as a window ledge…

Okay, so he spilled the tea on purpose to bring her to the computer and introduce her to "Project Walapang." Walapang had been swapped, just like a gemprint, for the file with the blueprints. When she entered file number he'd "given her," it brought up the file she was looking for, completing the circuit so to speak. That confirmed she was in the right place, doing the right thing. It was his way of letting her know she had the right idea.

…Her body slid back along the wire as she dropped in a swift controlled fall, her hand shooting up quickly to catch the cable again. She swung up and over, twisting her back and hips forcefully for momentum, powerful legs launching her at last into a handstand…

So she had the right idea, but what was it exactly? Find the file numbers, somewhere, somehow, go back to that screen, plug them in, and get…

…She caught a loose rope and opened her knees, releasing the stabilizing cable she held there. Rebalancing as she swung, she lowered herself to a medium-thin wire…

And get what??

…She bent her body at the pelvis and spun until she lay flat at the hips against the thickest nest of cable…

Assuming she found the file numbers, she'd plug them in and get something. But what?

…She stopped her forward movement by flinging her arms wide until her body was at a sharp angle to the heavy wire mesh, then adjusted her arms fluidly to keep from sliding forward or back…

And why spill tea on the blueprints in the first place?

…She slid her thigh slowly and evenly against a cable until she caught it with the back of her knees, then arched her back creating enough momentum to soar clear of the "motion sensors" and somersault to the mats.

Why spill the tea? Why this convoluted game –Walapang for godsake– instead of just telling her?

* * *

The door to Cobblepot's office opened and Clayface walked into the lounge, noting the whispers and covert pointing as he made his way to the bar. Even though technically he'd been a regular for months, this was his first appearance in his natural muddy state. He sat at the bar and considered the implications of everyone's surprise: Raven and the waitresses who had been so attentive the night before were merely responding to his handsome face. They did not recognize him as Matt Hagen the moviestar. Had it been that long? They weren't that young, were they?

He ordered a mudslide, and Sly – who was a pal whenever he came in as the Monarch – stared at him, wide-eyed.

"Oh my god, you're Clayface," the bartender said at last.

"Yes," Matt said gruffly.

This was humiliating. Sly served assassins, freaks, and Joker without batting an eye, but he was gawking at Clayface like Frankenstein's monster.

"Th- That means you're Matt Hagen," Sly declared in a hoarse whisper.

Matt blinked.

"Well, yes."

"Oh my god, you're Matt Hagen," Sly enthused.

Matt obligingly morphed into Captain Lance Starfire, and Sly's mouth dropped open.

"Get outta here," Sly exclaimed. "I have seen _Space Tempest_ like 60 times!"

Matt segued automatically into the gracious celeb meeting adoring fan, then he remembered this was _SLY_ with whom he'd been talking sports and movies for weeks, who downloaded soundbytes for Harley's iPod to play a prank on Scarecrow, who…

Matt gently reminded him about the mudslide, and watched while Sly-the-unflappable couldn't pour the Kahlua his hand was shaking so bad. Matt thought it over for about 30 seconds before reaching his decision. He didn't want the drink as much has he wanted a pal. So he asked Sly to step into the backroom for a second and morphed (for the last time, he swore) into the Monarch of Menace. He started to explain about the history with Ivy and needing a disguise to— he got no further.

Sly's fanboy devotion to Lance Starfire was replaced by an entirely different kind of admiration as the bartender's quick mind connected all the dots to conclude, "You did Harley! Oh _man_."

Matt/Monarch produced a hint of a blush to soften his proud smirk. A few between-men comments were exchanged regarding blondes, breasts, buttocks, starlets, tassels, and handlebars. Matt resumed his previous guise, returned to the bar, and Sly (still blushing and stifling a guffaw about the handlebars) made his mudslide.

* * *

After her workout, Catwoman returned to the manor by way of Alfred's elevator. She stopped in the kitchen and took a pint of Haagen Daaz, then headed up to her suite… she stopped in her tracks as she passed the tall windows and saw the Batsignal shining dramatically over "his city."

She remembered the day she'd found him in the south drawing room looking at this view – which was damn unusual, now that she thought of it. Bruce was seldom in the drawing room except when they entertained formally. He liked staying where he could keep an eye on the city, yes, in case the Batsignal was lit, but he did it from the _ study_ and not at _eleven o'clock in the morning_. The weird behavior didn't begin with spilling the tea, it began that morning, when he got back from patrol, must have walked right by her sleeping in the cave, and just left her there. Weird-even-for-Bruce #1.

Now that she thought of it, they'd only spoken (hell, she'd only seen him awake) three times since the weirdness began: that morning when _she_ sought _him_ out, then when he'd come to her suite apparently for the express purpose of spilling tea on the blueprints, and in between – when he'd given her the job to revamp the manor security. THAT'S where it started, not the tea,_ the whole idea of her overhauling manor security_. The whole thing was part of his … "Project Walapang."

She thought back to that conversation in the garden. Weird-even-for-Bruce #2: He had wanted her to be in costume. He emphasized that it was _Bruce Wayne _that wanted a meeting_ with Catwoman_. Even for him, that was a little much with the line between identities.

Weird-even-for-Bruce #3: her "compensation." He didn't _pay_ her for stuff like this anymore. When she'd done the WE job, sure, they'd just started dating. Hell, for all intents and purposes, they'd just "met" as Bruce and Selina. But by the time she'd moved into the manor, they were past that kind of thing. It wasn't even discussed when she tweaked the ground security, or worked on the JLA system for the Dibny case, or when they talked about diamonds or art theft. Now, all of a sudden there's four gold bars hidden around the house and cave and… She inhaled sharply as the thought clicked into focus: Selina had seen gold bars often enough in the course of Catwoman's career. Whether Credit Suisse, Swiss Pamp or Bank of England, they were embossed with serial numbers of 5 or 6 digits and a designation of their purity. The best were 99.9-percent pure gold, represented on the bar's surface as 999.9  
…and the sample file number in the Walapang database was 39115-HK**999.9**

* * *

Nutmeg wasn't sure what to make of it. Selina-Cat finally had a treat. Cold, sweet, vanilla, so rich and creamy. But she didn't seem happy at all. She was thoughtful and distracted. How could anybody not be happy with sweet and rich and creamy?

Nutmeg flared her nose, wondering if whatever made Selina-Cat so thoughtful had a smell. All she detected besides leather was the wet-damp-rock that smelled like Bat-Bruce when he was Twofoot-in-Boots. That meant Selina-Cat visited the caveplace behind the ticktock. The only other smell was the creamy vanilla treat. Nutmeg tilted her head to the perfect "aren't I precious" angle, and Selina-Cat dipped her claw into the creamy and gave her a taste. Nutmeg licked it carefully, for Selina-Cat's claws were very sharp.

When she had her fill, she let Selina-Cat know by making catfists in the soft leather, and Selina-Cat picked her up— along with a crunchy paper that took up too much space in Selina-Cat's hand, and they went across the hall to the soft, warm nap place.

* * *

This was bad. Selina awoke in a cold sweat. She couldn't remember her dream, but she knew it involved Batman and it was _bad_. She rolled onto her side and watched Bruce sleeping. The sight did nothing to ease the sick anxiety lingering from her nightmare. This is how she fell asleep in the first place, watching him… and she had no doubt that this sight is what led to the dream, whatever it was. Batman and bad, very bad.

She was downright pissed when he got home. Cats don't compromise. They just don't. Catwoman didn't steal anymore because it suited her, not as any sort of concession to him or his judgmental jackass attitudes. As far as she'd come with Bruce, she'd done it without betraying herself or her principles – until tonight. She'd been lying in bed with a floorplan folded between the mattress and box spring instead of looking for the gold bars, and if that wasn't betraying her principles… She was desperate to find the first gold bar, get a serial number, and see if she was right about that Walapang screen in the Batcomputer. But it was late, and she knew Batman could be back from patrol at any time. Until she knew more about what was going on with him, she just… she just didn't… she didn't trust him somehow, not in this situation, she had to keep her activities hidden.

That was unsettling enough, not knowing if she could trust Bruce. It probably _shouldn't_ have bothered her so much, given the way they started, claws and batarangs. But it did bother her and maybe that's why she was so damn pissed about waiting. She had to wait until he'd be out of the house again for a good stretch of time, and that was the compromise Catwoman couldn't quite stomach.

Other criminals, even some big name rogues, would change their plans because of Batman. They would postpone the next stage of a crimespree, or sometimes speed one up, to avoid or provoke (mostly avoid) a confrontation with the formidable Bat. Catwoman never did, not once. If he didn't show up when expected, that was fine with her, she would make her own fun. If he did show, that was fine too, she could handle him. But now there she was, avoiding Batman. She wasn't prepared to risk his interrupting this particular job. If it came to a, a "confrontation," she'd have no idea how to deal with him or how to approach it. So she brought a floorplan with her, got undressed and slipped into bed. The most she could accomplish tonight was to study a few of the rooms and think through the possibilities, come up with some ideas to investigate tomorrow night. Whiskers and Nutmeg were with her, and as soon as their ears flickered, she stashed the floorplan where he wouldn't see… and the nettling thought settled in: It had finally happened, Catwoman had _ compromised_. She was putting off something she wanted to go for tonight, and she did it because of him. She didn't do what she was aching to do, because of him. She couldn't even try for it until tomorrow, because of him.

And suddenly there he was, _not_ wearing a mask and cape, _standing_ by the bed in the kimono she'd given him, and she was _thoroughly pissed_. She had to do something, a pissed cat won't sleep.

With all the uncertainty, she didn't want to do much, nothing too suspicious. So she fell back on the old standard. When he ruffled her fur in the old days, when he kept her from the Katz Collection or recovered the Rosenthal Rubies, she came on to him. She'd tease and taunt until he could barely function, she'd press against him as they fought and whisper sinful temptations that would send most men into cataleptic shock… Tonight, she crawled across the bed at her most seductively feline, her throat vibrating with a feral purr as she crawled up his chest like a wildcat. Then she stretched up a little farther and whispered, her moist lips at his ear and no cowl to keep her hot breath from tickling that sensitive flesh as she reiterated one of those sinful enticements from the past…

Not a grunt. She didn't get so much as a grunt in response. He barely acknowledged her at all. He said he was tired and climbed into bed. She stared, not quite believing as he turned out the light without another word, rolled over, and went right to sleep.

* * *

…to be continued…


	5. Gold Rush

_Chapter 5: Gold Rush_

* * *

It was Oswald Cobblepot's third favorite thing in the world, after birds and the dream with the feathered showgirls: anticipated profit.

Anticipating profit was actually better than achieving profit, because once the job was done and you returned to the hideout, you had what you had –kwak– and that was it. Four eagle's head proofs or four hundred. All that was left was counting it up. But anticipating profit, that was a different bird altogether. There was no limit at this stage. Who's to say how many of the top tier rogues would want to avail themselves of Matt Hagen's services? Who could guess how the true aristocrats of crime would put those talents of his to work? And Oswald would dip his beak into each and every deal. Kwak-kwak-kwak, yes anticipated profit. It was his third-favorite thing in the world.

* * *

Cats seldom mope. Selina didn't know what exactly was going on at Wayne Manor; the situation was mysterious, disturbing, frustrating, and possibly dangerous. But by late afternoon she had found one taste of cream to savor. It wasn't much, but it was a tiny point of satisfaction where she could focus her thoughts rather than letting them dwell on… Yes. Well. Not dwelling on that.

The cream: Since embarking on this new life with Bruce, she'd found many ways to keep Catwoman's true nature alive. From the "exercise" break-ins during her nightly prowls to the exhilarating rooftop and catlair games she sometimes played with Batman…

He rolled right over and went to sleep. He said he was tired, he rolled over, and went to sleep like she wasn't even there. He… No, it was pointless to keep drifting back to that. The only way to find out what was going on was to get the job done: find a gold bar, get a serial number, and see whatever the hell "Project Walapang" was set up to show her. To get that job done, Catwoman needed to keep a clear head. Stop moping and enjoy the cream.

She'd found many ways to keep Catwoman's true nature alive. Now and then, like with Aquaman's Sub Diego job and the whole Zatanna fiasco, it went beyond games and she had the chance to really scratch the old itch. But even on those occasions there was one thing missing. She never realized until now, although it was a vital part of a true cat-crime. The furtive cat. The surreptitious feline. Visiting the museum, jewelry store or gallery during the day in civilian attire, attending a party at the penthouse and chatting up the host, getting a look at the place up close and personal – And all the while seeming so innocent, and all the while seeing so much. Beating the best alarm system was a rush. Cracking an uncrackable safe, picking an unpickable lock. A good chase across the rooftops culminating in a fevered scrap and scratch with Batman, it was all a rush. But this was too. This was a rare and forgotten thrill, making her plans right under their noses, acting so natural and so innocent, not one of them ever guessing the wily cat was in their midst. Me-ow.

So Selina had breakfast. She approved Alfred's menu (there might come a time to bring Alfred into her confidence, but for now she thought it best to view him as Bruce's ally, not hers). She wrote a few letters in the morning room before lunch. She went for a walk, she read a magazine, she brushed Whiskers and Nutmeg, and she did her nails. To all outward appearances, it was a deliciously lazy day around the manor. But that night, by the time the Batmobile passed the turnoff to Country Club Lane and sped off once more towards the city, Catwoman had her plan completely worked out.

She started in the dining room. The idea had fluttered in her brain since breakfast: four gold bars hidden in the house, grounds and cave; that's what he said. That meant there would be at least one in each location, she was sure of it. That's how his mind worked. _And_ he was catering to Catwoman, consciously and deliberately playing into what he knew of Catwoman with this whole crazy setup "revamping manor security" etc. So… What did he know about _ Catwoman_ with respect to Wayne Manor? He knew the one piece she would have taken if she'd hit the house when she was working. She'd told him: she would take the Turner in the dining room. It was a crazy day, Pheromones and Batman appearing out of the past like ghosts in a Shakespeare prologue. It was a crazy day and it was about to get a lot crazier as that first temporal anomaly erupted into a full cosmic crisis. But Bruce was not one to forget a detail like that that, no matter how much craziness was whirring around his head. He would remember that she said she'd take the Turner. So she spent lunch and dinner casually working out how.

Wayne Manor was built at a time when the dining room was seen as a stage. It was meant for displaying artwork as emblems of the owner's wealth and taste. There was room for nine paintings altogether. All but two hung from visible gold chains that rose to the top of the molding and disappeared into the wall. Behind those walls, heavy rods and counterweights supported the enormous weight of the frames. This archaic system was no longer needed, modern materials offered a thousand less conspicuous ways to hang pictures twice this size. But behind the wall, Selina knew from the blueprints, there was nothing archaic. Those antique chains were attached to a much more contemporary type of alarm. They were wired into shock sensors, just like those at the museum, just like the ones she showed Batman she could beat. Anyone moving a painting would, theoretically, disturb the weight on the chains and set off the alarm — despite there being no device whatsoever attached to, or anywhere near, the pictures. It was very clever. What looked like an outdated mechanism in an old house was really camouflage for a brilliant high-tech trap.

The were only two ways around it that Catwoman could see: either prevent the shock sensors from going off (which would be impossible without a month's preparation, a special magnet array from Kittlemeier, and three henchmen) or else let the alarm "go off" but jam the signal, so it couldn't "tell" any other parts of the system when it detected a disturbance.

The difficulty was where to place the jammer. It couldn't go _on_ the Turner, obviously, because the Turner was leaving the wall. It couldn't go _behind_ the painting or anywhere that she'd have to touch a painting in order to place it. So there was no way she could point it at the sensor straight on, but there _was_ one place where she could come at it _from the side_. From the blueprints, Selina knew there was a dumbwaiter connecting the dining room with the kitchen below. Once upon a time, this small box elevator was used to bring food quickly and discreetly from the kitchen. It was raised and lowered by pulleys and that meant a sizeable cavity above the box, tall enough for her to crawl into. She could affix her jammer to that inner wall where it would be on a level with the sensors and close enough block any signal, then she could easily get the Turner off the wall without—

After a frozen moment, Catwoman let out the breath she didn't know she was holding.

She'd been so focused on getting the _Turner_, she'd half-forgotten her real aim was a gold bar. She'd opened the cabinet concealing the dumbwaiter and lowered the box that acted as an elevator, thinking to crawl up the pulley once it was out of the way… when she saw an object riding on its "roof" as it lowered. It was a long, thin rectangle with a rich dark sheen… She raised it back up to take a closer look. The rectangle was embossed with a Bank of England seal, royal warrant, and the serial number… 00570. Further down it said HK (made in Hong Kong, she guessed absently). And the purity designation was just as she remembered: 999.9. She removed the bar carefully – it wasn't exactly light – and stored it in the short-term hiding place she'd chosen in her suite. Then she headed for the cave.

A minute later she was staring at the Walapang screen again, breathing a silent prayer as she typed 00579-HK999.9. She hit return and the screen flashed. A new window opened. The heading indicated a chapter from a forensics textbook on ballistics and blowback. But substituted for the article was a small blurb from ROCKHOUND QUARTERLY:

_…found by Michael Haili last fall. The reddish sandstone is marbled with lava from both Mauna Loa, the earth's largest volcano, and Kilauea, the world's most active. Because of the predominance of black and red, Haili named the find Harley Quinn Kryptonite. Despite the whimsical name, the sample contains no phosphorescent or florescent properties…_

Well that cleared up a lot! Harley Quinn Kryptonite, for Bast's sake! Thanks, Dark Knight, thank you ever so fucking much! Selina hissed at the screen, then shut it down, remembering that she still didn't want to risk any more time at Batman's workstation than she had to.

She headed into the trophy room, her mind racing. Clearly, the clue might mean the obvious: Harley Quinn. But what could the Tassel Twit possibly be involved in that would make Bruce go all Mission Impossible? Kryptonite, on the other hand, meant Superman – and super-_hearing_ and super-powered enemies. That would certainly explain why Bruce wouldn't say anything openly. He had precautions on top of precautions for that kind of super-eavesdropping, but if something had happened and he no longer trusted those defenses, he wouldn't take any chances.

Of course it wouldn't explain his turning off in bed.

But maybe she was reading too much into that. Maybe he really was tired. It wasn't impossible; he was human. Especially if he was a human that had a problem with Superman, that would certainly be exhausting.

Again she hissed. The first "clue," if it could even be called that, raised more questions than it answered, but it did confirm that she had the right idea about "Project Walapang" and the numbers from the gold bars. And that's what brought her to this display case. She had not chosen the trophy room as a random spot away from the workstation where she could think over the implications of Harley Quinn Kryptonite.

Bruce said the bars would be hidden in the house, grounds, _and cave. _And he was playing up to Catwoman. This particular case contained an exploding question mark, a freeze ray, several hats tricked out with microelectronics, and a handle of braided leather. It was one of her earliest whips, a true cat-o-nine-tails. The case itself was polycarbon, just like the one at the museum. She told him how it breaks on an entirely different frequency from normal glass. A regular glass-break detector won't hear a thing if you break a plate of polycarbon, but this wasn't a "regular" glass-break detector. This discreet 3-inch square protruding from the side of the display case had a tiny recessed silhouette of a bat etched into its surface.

If she broke this "glass," this device _would_ be set to the right frequency, it would hear the sound and send a signal… where? Checking the base, she could see it wasn't hardwired to anything. It was another wireless transmitter, which meant she could jam it just like she had with the Turner. She rummaged in her pouch and found a Kittlemeier exclusive the size of a cell phone. She pointed its eye delicately at the case and focused it on the detector's transmitter, then pressed a button. Keeping the button depressed, she turned slowly until she heard a faint click like that of a Geiger counter. She took a step in that direction and was rewarded with another click – then another – then another – until she reached the wall. She looked down at the device then up at the wall again. It was a wall. A stone wall – in a cave, and no different from any other patch of wall in the cave. He couldn't have a receiver _inside_ a stone wall, it wasn't like plaster in the manor, there were no seams or inlets. And it's not like you could just_ put up_ a new cavewall like hanging drywall or scaffolding to cover up a… wait a minute

… actually…

You could. _He_ could.

Holding her breath, Selina reached out her hand until the clawtips just came into contact with the edge of the… edge of… she stretched her hand out further, giddy at the discovery. Her fingers and then her entire hand passed right through the "solid rock."

* * *

Only Patient J. Only Patient J could ruin a delightful alleviating mechanism like _Barefoot Contessa_!

Bartholomew knew there was nothing inherently wrong with a mild obsession connected to a diverting new pastime. It was perfectly normal to reflect on it, now and then, throughout the day, so long as it did not distract one from his or her responsibilities. So when Harleen noticed the shopping list on his desk, Bartholomew saw no harm in telling her about the new show he was watching, or his plans to make Asian grilled salmon, zucchini vichyssoise and pear clafouti that evening.

She said she didn't like fish and made a face. She said clafouti was a funny word. She said zucchini and vichyssoise were funny words too, and she laughed for five minutes. That was the extent of the interest Harley expressed at the time. But she evidently told Patient J about the conversation, because he devoted his entire session that afternoon to the "pleasures" of watching Ina Garten cook! He called her the _zaftig culinariast _(which was not a word, Dr. Bartholomew looked it up as soon as Patient J left his office), and revealed that it was only marathon sessions of _Barefoot Contessa _ which enabled him to get through his recent "Ha-Ha-Harley drought, HAHAHAHA!"

The doctor could only stare in mute horror as Patient J giggled and guffawed his way through Ina's special recipe for 40 clove chicken! "And the smashed potatoes, DOC! Have you tried the smashed potatoes…"

Bartholomew felt ill. But he couldn't end the session, this was -by Patient J's standards- something of a breakthrough, opening up this way about a personal endeavor unconnected to killing Batman, killing Robin, killing Nightwing, or killing F. Murray Abraham.

"Just something about the way Miss Garten kneads her rump roasts, Doc. Mmmm. Makes me want to do a little '_cooking_' of my own! HAHAHAHAhahahahahahahahhahaaa!"

Professionally it was an astonishing breakthrough. But now, Bartholomew was having a hard time concentrating on the show or his cooking because all he could think about was Patient J and his "marathon sessions" with Ina.

* * *

Damn he was brilliant. Amazingly, fiendishly, wonderfully, diabolically _brilliant_. Catwoman was equally thrilled with her own cleverness in figuring it out as she was with Bruce's unbelievable genius. Now she only had to figure what was generating the hologram and block it. There could be dozens of projectors to make the effect seem solid from any angle, but she only had to disrupt the illusion enough to see inside. She reinitialized Kittlemeier's device, focusing it this time on the hologram itself and giggled anew as it indicated the "glass break detectors" on the different cases that were, in fact, the source of the holographic projection. She quickly taped over the one on the whip case and looked back at the illusion wall. She squinted, just making out a "wrongness" in the look of the rock. It still looked solid, but the colors and shadows were off. She reasoned that the most important projectors would be the most out-of-the-way. The more remote a box was, the less likely anyone could step into its path and block its beams. Knowing that made it easy. She taped over a second box, and then a third. When she looked back at the hologram again, it was no longer solid. The "wall" was still visible but transparent, and "inside" it, Selina could see a small alcove with a safe-door built into the wall. It was just large enough that a person could stand in the alcove in front of the safe, and be completely covered by the hologram. Knowing that much, she removed the tape and slipped into the alcove to get a closer look.

She'd never seen anything like it. The manor and cave were full of various safes and lockboxes; none were that unusual. Upstairs the typical fire and burglary safes protected the typical family heirlooms, stock certificates, old and current deeds to the land, manor and other holdings. Downstairs, the typical laboratory locks sealed off vials of Scarecrow toxin, Smile-X, and fluid from the Lazarus Pits. There were a few paper filing cabinets that locked exactly the same way all locking file cabinets locked. It was all top quality gear, but nothing really out of the ordinary. This on the other hand… well she couldn't say it was "from outer space." She'd been to the Watchtower and she'd dismantled the Justice League system; she had seen enough truly alien technology to wreck that simile. This wasn't Martian, Kryptonian or Thanagarian. It was just – Brucian.

First there was the metal. It didn't look like your standard steel or titanium safedoor –which was hardly a shock. Superman did visit the cave now and then, and Selina always wondered why someone with Bruce's suspicion and sense of personal privacy was okay with that. This safe would be the answer. If this metal was what she guessed, some kind of titanium-lead alloy, then he did have someplace completely shielded from prying eyes…which underlined the Kryptonite half of the Harley Quinn Kryptonite clue, didn't it?

The safe had a double lock: a traditional dial and an electronic keypad. Neither posed a significant obstacle. A fairly simple clawtip trick applied to the correct wire caused the keypad to resend the last combination punched in. The traditional dial lock would be trickier. If this titanium-lead alloy could be drilled at all, it would probably require a special drill bit. Kittlemeier would make one out of whatever material she specified, but that meant time she didn't have. Drilling would also make noise and leave a conspicuous hole in the front of the safedoor. None of that seemed prudent… Without that ability to insert a camera and see the tumblers moving as she worked the dial, Catwoman had no choice but to crack the safe the old fashioned way, manipulating the lock to detect the contact points as each wheel moved a notch into position. Many thieves considered this practice "taking the high road;" it was a rare skill, safecracking at its purest. It required no tools or special equipment, only a good ear, an understanding of the mechanism, and patience. Only the last presented a challenge.

Catwoman could turn a - _Click_ - safedial the way Riddler did crosswords, noting the soft tick of the drive pin almost subconsciously and - _Click_ - mentally connecting them to a contact range that represented a notch inside the mechanism and a parking point on the dial… if only Selina would - _Click_ - keep her thoughts focused on the task at hand… 12 and 15, the first number is between 12 and 16, no _15_…12 and 15… If only she could keep from replaying that scene from the night before. If only she could stop thinking about - _Click_ - Bruce rolling over and going to sleep, barely even acknowledging - _Click_ – Focus, damnit.

She had to leave the alcove, lean with her back to the wall and take series of deep breaths… She was too experienced a thief to panic when she heard a noise in the costume vault. She _did_ take off her mask and gloves, to appear more casual in case she was spotted, and then stealthily checked the Batmobile hanger. The primary car was still missing. That meant it was Alfred in the vault. It also meant it wasn't nearly as late as she thought.

She returned to the alcove and hid inside the hologram. She didn't touch the dial, she just looked at it and waited. Two locks. Jesus. Hidden inside a hologram in an already hidden cave, and it's still under two locks – actually three, now that she was looking more closely. There appeared to be a small pressure switch under the lip of the door. She knew those, they were all the rage about ten years ago, you had to press them at the same time you turned the handle for the door to actually open. So technically three locks, INSIDE a hologram INSIDE the fucking _Batcave_. This was getting a little scary. Could this really be what he wanted her to break into?

He did say look into anything. He said it twice. _Anything_.

Taking a final breath, she recited the digits she'd already picked off and went back to work. Ninety minutes later, she depressed that hidden pressure switch and turned the handle. She closed her eyes, reminded the Universe that she never signed on for any of this and all she'd really done was kiss a man in a mask, and finally she looked inside.

Two boxes rested on top of a gold bar identical to the one in the dumbwaiter. Underneath that was a stack of folders and manila envelopes. The bar was her objective, obviously, but only 10 seconds trial-and-error made it perfectly clear that both the gold and one of the boxes were too heavy for her to just slide the bar out without disturbing anything else. So she removed the larger box first, and immediately discovered it was the light one. Mahogany. With a gold W inlaid on the top and a simple latch. It opened to reveal a broken, incomplete string of pearls… a well-worn leather wallet with the initials TW monogrammed in the corner and dark stain of what Selina could only assume was blood… a pair of wedding bands and a remarkably beautiful engagement ring… and a worn, rabbit-eared photograph of Thomas and Martha Wayne with an adorable 8-year-old Bruce at one of those rustic New England marinas.

Selina squelched the guilt, closed the box, and set it gently on the floor. The small box was next, and as soon as she touched it she realized this was indeed the heavy one. It was lead. After the personal nature of the first box she was loath to open a second, but _lead_ (particularly when there was a kryptonite clue on the table) wasn't something she could ignore. She opened it.

Inside was a single object: a man's ring. Her jewel-thief's eye appraised the material as high-grade platinum. It surrounded a single square stone, vibrant green, smooth and polished, with a beautiful internal luminescence like uncut emerald. It had to be kryptonite. And in her mind's ear, she realized Superman had mentioned it once. He said he knew Bruce had gone off to put "that ring" in his belt. At the time she had no idea what it meant but… well, evidently here it was. She replaced the ring in the box and set it on the floor at her feet beside the first one. Then she carefully maneuvered the gold bar out of the safe, took down the number, and paused, uncertain how to proceed.

Superman had mentioned the ring but Bruce never did. Now he was letting her find it. Harley Quinn Kryptonite and now a Kryptonite ring. She wondered if it was coincidence or if she should go through the rest of the safe. Maybe it was just a place to stash a gold bar and whatever else happened to be in the safe happened to be there – and maybe it wasn't. Selina looked for a long, wondering moment at the stack of files and envelopes. Then she restored the gold bar rather than taking it, and replaced both boxes on top just as she'd found them. It was that photograph, Bruce with his parents, the pearls and the wallet and the wedding rings. Unless and until she was absolutely sure she was meant to go through that stuff, she wouldn't pry any further. She had the serial number from the second bar. That was enough to continue with Project Walapang.

It wasn't exactly logical. She was supposed to find the bar, ergo she was supposed to take the bar– _Hiss_, screw it. This wasn't a time for logic; this was a cat-crime. And Selina had always let instinct dictate what left a safe and came home with her, and what stayed right where it was. The serial number would come with her; the gold, for now, would stay where it was.

As before, Selina returned to the workstation and pulled up the Walapang screen. This time once she typed in the code, she was rewarded with a much longer document inserted into a scholarly article on fingerprints.

**… … … … : Research Log: Batman, Supplemental : … … …  
****Hagen, Matthew a.k.a. Clayface  
Incapacitation/Immobilization/Neutralization****  
(cont.)**

While it may or may not resemble the human organ, Clayface certainly does have a "brain" in that there is a central consciousness that controls his body. It does so through electrochemical messages like the firing of human neurons to tense a muscle, hence why he cannot hold his form together when he gets wet. The more conducive the liquid, the faster he loses control of the surface matter and breaks apart.

The key to incapacitating him (and possibly the key to curing his condition REF: Special Foundation Initiative §4, Humanitarian), is therefore to change the conductive and insulating qualities of his mass until his "brain" cannot get those electrical "tense the muscle" commands to his surface tissue. This can likely be accomplished by saturating him with hydrogen, a highly pressurized stream of hydrogen, ideally with a nickel catalyst and at elevated temperatures. The result would break the carbon double bonds in his clay, lowering the temperature at which it turns from liquid to solid. Once a sufficient amount of his body is effected, solidifying at room temperature into insulating matter, he could no longer get the signals from his brain to his surface mass to morph or even move.

The difficulty, of course, is that the process cannot be adequately tested on isolated samples of clay-matter. Without Hagen's brain actively manipulating a sample while it is being treated, researcher cannot gauge the proper level of H-saturation for stability/immobility without risking permanent, catastrophic harm to the subject.  
… … … … : : : : : : : : : : : : : : … … …

Selina's heart started pounding as soon as she saw the name Hagen. Hagen a.k.a. Clayface, a.k.a. shapeshifter, a.k.a. this was bad.

"Project Walapang" started to make sense if he had to make sure _she_ wasn't an imposter. He had certainly hidden the clues in ways only Catwoman's expertise would think to find them… But she _wasn't_ the imposter, although she was starting to have a hunch who might be.

It wasn't Bruce, that was one thing she could be sure of. Clayface could replicate almost anyone visually, he could mimic most voices and mannerisms with an actor's skill, but the one thing he couldn't come close to was smell. When Bruce came to bed, she knew that musk of leather, sweat, and cave damp better than she knew her own. It _was_ Bruce; that smell was unique as a fingerprint and no mud-being with no olfactory senses of his own could come close to replicating it. It was Bruce – it was Bruce that came into bed, said he was tired, and rolled over like she wasn't even there.

Damnit.

Focus.

She closed Batman's typically over-thought treatise on how to defeat Clayface, and made a quick trip to the hellmouth closet for a much simpler weapon.

It was a risk. It was getting late enough that Batman might return at any time. But it was a bigger risk to wait. If Selina was right and Bruce came home and caught her, it wouldn't matter. If she was wrong –

Well, if she was wrong she was going to feel like an absolute moron. And even when Bruce wasn't acting too suspicious to be trusted, she would prefer he not see her behaving like a total idiot. Nevertheless, Hagen a.k.a. Clayface a.k.a. shapeshifter a.k.a. we could be in some serious, serious trouble and it's not a time to worry about looking like an idiot.

She stopped in the kitchen and added a cup of kosher salt to the chamber, recalling "the more conducive the liquid, the faster he loses control" – typically convoluted bat-speak for "Use salt water." She returned to the cave, casually tossed an oilcloth over Workstation 1, then pulled out the SuperSoaker with vicious speed and subjected the bat Walapang to a sustained 30-second spray.

* * *

The huge glacier in the center of the Iceberg Lounge divided in half, revealing one of those golden, carpeted staircases like in the old Hollywood musicals. The band struck up_ Puttin on the Ritz_ as Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot descended – in an even more dapper tuxedo than usual – twirling his umbrella instead of a cane while feathered showgirls crossed before him on each step…

In his sleep, Oswald's lips quivered as his dreamself surveyed the Iceberg crowd and mentally calculated the night's receipts… the cover charge alone… a _World Without Batman _cover charge, for an extra 20 per person (with a 4 drink minimum, 6 extra if you want your igloo in a souvenir glass), patrons would enjoy a Gotham City in which no Batman existed – no bats of any kind, no winged creatures at all except birds. Properly feathered birds – like the lovely Raven and Roxy crossing before him on the bottom step and flitting ever so delicately into his arms as he proceeded into the dining room.

* * *

"I'm very sorry," Selina told the drenched and shell-shocked bat as she wrapped it in a towel while its little friend squawked and squeaked and fluttered overhead. "I said I was sorry," she told it. The bat seemed dazed more than hurt. His ear was sort of bent back the wrong way and he'd probably breathed in more salt water than he'd have liked. But he had worked his one wing out of the towel already, that was a good sign. Selina rewrapped him and did a quick feel along his shoulders the way she would check a cat for injuries. He was holding his legs and back strangely, but that straightened out once he was dried off and warmed up.

"Now look, Stud," she told him with a hint of her old rooftop manner, "I know I'm not exactly in a position to ask a favor, but it's going to look really suspicious if you don't go back to your perch. So could we please, just this once, overlook the fact that kitty had her fingers in the Tiffany's vault – or in this case, thought you were a shape shifting intruder and nearly drowned you with 80-plus ounces of sustained saltwater dousing?"

The bat extracted itself from the towel and screeched spitefully at her hand before flapping back to its companion on the perch.

"Good enough," Selina sighed.

She started cleaning up the workstation, and glanced back at the trophy room. If there was any question of an imposter among them, maybe she should go through the safe after— Too late. She heard the first growl of the Batmobile engine approaching the cave entrance. Within a second, it grew to a roar – usually a welcome roar, but not tonight. She hurriedly grabbed the remains of cotton swabs, oil cloth and towels, and sprinted toward the stairs just as the walls began to rumble from the car entering the hangar.

* * *

…to be continued…


	6. The Size Up

_Chapter 6: The Size-Up_

* * *

Oswald preferred to distance himself from the day-to-day minutia of his more illegal operations. He ruled as a true emperor penguin, perched high on the very top of his Iceberg and leaving the piddling (and indictable) details to lesser men. He made one exception: sports gambling. He enjoyed an elegant revenge in profiting from sports, particularly football. The athletic obsessions of those obnoxiously manly men who got all the girls when they were young high school heroes themselves. Now they could do no more than watch (and place fat bets to assuage the doubts about their waning manhood). So they got a cheap thrill and some petty validation –kwak– Oswald got the cash.

Last night, he was immersed in odds and point spreads for so many Lions, Red Lions, Fighting Lions, Flaming Lions, Cougars, Tigers, Jaguars, Bobcats, Meercats, and Wildcats that he completely mistook Raven's message. She'd come in just after closing when he was occupied with the east side bookmakers. He heard her say _something_ about a cat-something at ten. He assumed it was a 10 G bet or maybe a revised point spread on the Wildcats. He quacked that he would get to it in a minute; Raven left the postit on his desk and went home. Then at ten o'clock in the morning, he awoke to an insistent doorbell. By the time he made it into his smoking jacket, his visitor switched to a sharp, persistent knocking. He growled and grumbled as he waddled to the door, missing the days when Dove and Sparrow were around for this sort of thing. Answering his own door first thing in the morning like some kind of peasant. He swung the door open in a fit of irritation— and there was Selina, thanking him for _ agreeing to see her so early??_

Oswald was too proud to admit a mistake, or to receive a female visitor with anything less than his usual stream of exaggerated refinement. "Felicitations, my favorite feline," he began. "Too long has my humble nest been missing your esteemed patronage."

"Meow," Selina offered, accepting and dismissing the compliment in one succinct word. With Oswald, there was no way to skip the overblown preliminaries, but she'd learned to hurry them along this way. He showed her in. Selina had never seen his living quarters above the Iceberg and she paused now, trying to take it all in. The décor was as overdone as his greeting; Oswald's living room made the opulent nightclub below look like a shanty.

"So tell me, my dear Catwoman," he cooed, holding her chair as she sat. "How might I be of service to the world's preeminent procurer of prized property? Are you perhaps reconsidering my offer, looking for a better fence? For a client of your stature, I would be prepared to offer terms such as you will not find in a hundred—"

"Not today," she purred, softening her usual refusal. "Of course, if today's dealings go well, I might consider it."

It worked.

"I'm sure we can come to an understanding," Oswald preened.

"Let's start with information," she stated, getting to the point now that Ozzy was softened up. "You are _the_ man to know in Gotham, after all. If any 'new faces' have come on the scene lately, I'm sure you'd be the first to know."

Oswald's eyes gleamed with satisfaction. He never dreamed word would get around so quickly. Only last night Hagen made his first public appearance as Clayface, and now, so anxious was Selina to get in on the ground floor, that she had pulled him out of bed rather than waiting until nightfall. He couldn't restrain his joy any longer and rubbed his hands together in an ecstasy of precipitate greed.

"Not a _new_ face at all, my felicitous feline, but an old one has indeed returned. One who will not be at all averse to hearing any enterprising proposals you wish to make. Now about my fee…"

Oswald said he expected thirty-five percent of the take, twenty from Matt Hagen's cut, fifteen from Catwoman's.

"Pfft," she replied, which was exactly the counteroffer Oswald expected. 12.5 percent he suggested. "Pfft," she repeated. 12… 11.5… 10 and that was the absolute minimum he was prepared to accept.

"I'll knock ten grand off the sixty you owe me from the Hapsburg dagger," she said crisply.

Oswald gaped and sputtered, but Selina calmly reminded him of the exquisite jeweled artifact his "bungling birds" had allowed Batman to recover. His hands quivered with emotion. As much as he wanted to argue, he knew he would never get her back as a client if he did. Which was worth more, an eagle's share of the Hagen job now or a plumper percentage of all Catwoman's dealings once he was reinstated as her fence? His mouth watered at the thought of that… and he would still have fifteen percent on Hagen's side.

"Sixty?" he said at last, pride demanding one more round of bargaining before he agreed, "I thought it was fifty you were still owed for that regrettable reversal with the dagger."

Selina smiled wide, Cheshire style. "Let's call it fifty-five, less ten for this, you'll still owe me forty-five."

Oswald sniffed as if evaluating the air at the tip of his nose.

"Naturally," Selina went on smoothly, "while I do expect to be paid some time between now and the afterlife, I am quite content, for now, to let you go on deducting my Iceberg tab from the total each month."

"Done-kwak," Oswald pronounced definitely.

"Meow," Selina answered, equally satisfied.

She supplied the location of a catlair, specified a time, and… and before she could leave, Oswald took off on another flight of rhetorical fancy: what a _delight_ it was –kwak– doing business with another true aristocrat of the rogue world. There wasn't enough of that anymore. All these new people that put on such airs when they were what? Nothing but glorified highwaymen. Adequate, that's what they were, –kwakwak– passably adequate, and for that they expected kudos. What had any of them done but mimic their betters?kwakwakwak And even that they didn't do very well. The original rogues were _rogues!_ kwakwakwakwakwak The true crème de la crème and for that…

Selina interrupted, saying how she really needed to get going, run a few errands before meeting Hagen at the lair.

Oswald showed her to the door, working in one more reference to criminal bluebloods and his profoundest hope that her upcoming collaboration with Clayface would usher in a Renaissance of classical old school roguery.

* * *

Alfred Pennyworth was not a superstitious man. There was a time, certainly, when most domestic servants were prone to the most outlandish beliefs. That, Alfred reflected, was simply because they were uneducated. Young, simple girls away from home for the first time, come to a big house to work as kitchen maids or scullery maids, sleeping together in creaking attics, indulging childish imaginations and working each other into a frenzy, it was no small wonder.

But those days were long past. Alfred was an educated man in the employ of an accomplished scientist. Apart from one or two theatrical observances, such as never whistling backstage or quoting the Scottish play, he had no foolish notions of ghosts, curses or jinxes. He was certainly not ready to give up on the day before 9 o'clock simply because he was wet in the shower before he realized he was out of shampoo, or because he absent-mindedly put tea into the coffeemaker in preparing the upstairs breakfast. These were the little mistakes everyone made from time to time, and it in no way constituted "one of those days."

By eleven-thirty, he was finding it harder to maintain that high, rational position. His trip to Harriman's Gourmet Pantry had elicited the most frightful news about the Finns' dinner party. Evidently his nemesis, the chef Anatole, had indeed committed "chocolate-covered onions" for the savory course, and not only that! He apparently got this Joker-worthy idea for a food pairing from a shop in Marseilles which made chocolates with such peculiar ingredients as fennel, lavender, or – yes, regrettable as it was – onions. So now, Mr. Harriman lamented, the hostesses of Bristol were all pestering him to stock these delicacies from Chocolatière du Panier. He had spent the better part of the morning on the telephone, wrestling with a French phrasebook.

* * *

The "errands" Selina invented were nothing more than a polite excuse to leave Oswald's in a hurry. She went straight to the catlair, although it was true that she had one or two adjustments to make once she got there. This particular lair, disguised as a Cats Cosmetics warehouse, was set up as little more than a themed lovenest for when the Bat/Cat games became nostalgic. So the first order of business was to doublecheck that no extra gauntlets or batarangs were left laying around. Satisfied, Selina removed the jacket and tshirt she used to make the catsuit appear inconspicuous on the street. She pulled on her clawed gloves and fastened the whip to her belt, although these weapons would be useless against someone like Clayface. She filled two atomizers and a small water pistol with superconductive fluid, just in case.

After that, she waited. She didn't have to wait long.

The perimeter defenses tripped exactly ten minutes before the hour. At least he was prompt. She checked the camera that monitored the front entrance, even though it was a pointless exercise where Clayface was concerned. Still, she checked the camera with a cat's curiosity. She saw that he'd obviously assumed a normal-looking shape to walk on the street. Now that he'd reached her door, he was morphing into the well-known "mud-heap" appearance. Selina put on her mask, although she realized with a bitter cringe that this too was a pointless exercise. If Clayface had infiltrated the manor, then he knew everything: Bruce's identity, the location of the cave, the level of her own involvement with Batman, everything.

She swallowed, went to the door, and ushered in her guest.

* * *

Still reeling from the horror of chocolate and onions, Alfred saw Edith Mason waving at him eagerly from the doorway of Perdita's Florals as he stepped out of Harriman's. He pivoted swiftly on his heel, as if he'd forgotten something, and retreated into the store. He bought a bottle of Mediterranean sea salt as camouflage while he thought through his options. Ms. Mason was certainly waiting for him outside to learn how "the family" liked the new flower arrangement for the dining room. He could hardly tell her that they hadn't seen it. Yet, as far as he knew, Master Bruce had not set foot in the dining room since its arrival, and he doubted Miss Selina had even noticed the pretty little spray of white carnations and fern. He simply could not say this to Edith Mason. It violated every precept of breeding, manners and common sense. So he would have to lie, telling her what he thought of the charming centerpiece as if it was Miss Selina's view. In the ordinary course of running the manor, that was nothing. But ordering this fifth arrangement was already something he'd done on his own, and he simply didn't wish to go further without some nod from the master or mistress of the house. What if next week Master Bruce did notice and wanted the flowers removed? What if Miss Selina preferred dahlias to carnations? How was he to come back to Edith Mason and explain such a change after he's lied and told her just the opposite? He couldn't. So he took his extra purchase (one could never have enough quality sea salt in the kitchen) and left Harriman's in a fit of abstraction, so lost in thought that he didn't even notice Edith Mason waving at him, nor did he hear her when she called his name. Twice.

He felt like an absolute heel, for despite his oblivious appearance, he saw her quite clearly and noted her acute disappointment. He vowed to somehow make it up to her. He also vowed that he would have some definite word from Master Bruce or Miss Selina about that centerpiece before he set foot out of Wayne Manor again.

* * *

"Do you prefer Matt, Matthew, or Clayface?" Catwoman began, projecting a smooth confidence she didn't feel.

"Pretty gal like you can call me whatever you like," Matt said smoothly. He might not be interested in whatever Catwoman was going to pitch, but the lady was easy on the eyes. He'd have no problem sitting and listening, as long as he could look at her. And the listening – man that voice – she actually had a _purr_ in her voice. Yes, he could easily sit here for the equivalent of five or six sour apple martinis, faking an interest in whatever she wanted to— Oh, she was asking a question.

"Been back in Gotham for a few weeks now," he answered casually. "I've been keeping a low profile."

There was an interesting look in her eye. He couldn't quite place it at first.

"How low?" she asked.

"'No one but me knew I was in town' low," Matt answered – and there it was again, a vaguely familiar… almost like a studio suit.

"No one?" Catwoman asked coyly. "Not even Batman?

My god that was it! The size up. She was sizing him up like a studio suit.

Auditions were for the hoi polloi. Once you got to be "box office gold" nobody cared if you could act, but they still liked to check you out. Before they put a summer blockbuster in your hands, they wanted to make sure you wouldn't put it up your nose. So the suits called you in and talked about your last picture, they asked how you got on with Cameron, they asked about Cannes and the Golden Globes… And all the while they looked at you just like Catwoman was looking at him now, trying to figure out what you were into and how much it could cost them if it went bad… Matt couldn't have said what he expected from a summons to the cat lair, but it wasn't being checked out by a studio suit.

* * *

"Ooh-wait, ooh-wait, ooh-wait," Harley enthused, bouncing her fists excitedly on her knees. "I'm telling it wrong, I forgot the choking Robin part."

Leland Bartholomew realized he was potentially standing at the threshold of a new life. Professional accomplishment – indeed fame and recognition well beyond the world of clinical psychiatry – could be a few weeks, a few sessions, possibly even a few _paragraphs_ away.

Harley Quinn had reconciled with Joker. Disastrous for her recovery, utterly disastrous. But after months of separation, they were evidently back together and "catching up" – or at least Joker was telling Harley a great deal about his life and activities since they parted. She, in turn, spent her sessions talking of nothing else. Nothing, it seemed, was as exciting to her as "what Mistah J said…"

It was a heartbreaking setback so far as reaching Harleen Quinzel and freeing her from her sad obsession with a homicidal madman. But the insights into Patient J that were emerging… Bartholomew heard about most of these episodes, in detail, from Patient J at the time they happened. He had compared J's account to the official reports, and drew what conclusions he could about Patient J's perception of events as contrasted with, well, _reality_. But now he had the unprecedented opportunity to glimpse how Patient J's comprehension changed over time, he was hearing – in vivid detail via Harley – how Patient J remembered these same events months later. The variations were astounding, and offered to revolutionize his understanding of this, the most puzzling criminal psychosis on record.

Understanding Joker, it was the holy grail of clinical psychiatry.

Yet strangely, Bartholomew felt remarkably indifferent about it. In his younger days, when he first joined the Arkham staff, the possibility of making this kind of breakthrough would have him skipping around the office ("figuratively," his dignity added), delirious with joy.

Where had it gone? Only a few short years ago… last year in fact… last year at this time he still had aspirations, still had that capacity to hope and dream. Where had it gone?

"And that's when Puddin' climbed up to the top-o-the-scrapheap that had once been the Batcopter, and planted a smiling flag in the rubble like…ooh, I forgot who it was like. Does Neil Young and Buzz Lightyear sound right?"

"I imagine you're thinking of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin," Bartholomew said dully. "Moon landing, 1969."

"Oh right," Harley giggled.

Bartholomew decided that answered his question. It was one too many of those: planting the flag like Neil Young and Buzz Lightyear… Just one too many.

* * *

Matt Hagen didn't know Catwoman well in the old days. They didn't move in the same circles. A smiling nod at the Iceberg, "Merry Christmas" as the Christmas party, that was about it. He knew she was A-list, and that might have been why he'd kept his distance. It wasn't that she was beautiful; they were all beauties. Even Ivy was nice to look at if only she'd shut her yap now and then. But Selina Kyle was the woman in that very top of the very top tier. "Gotham rogues? Why there's Joker, Riddler, Catwoman, Penguin…" She was _a star _in this world just as he had been in his. As the biggest star at a star-studded party, he'd walk up to a woman like that, lion to lion. A smooth line, a knowing wink, a couple drinks… The memory was too vivid back then. So he'd never approached Catwoman, and never really thought about her until Oswald called to set up a meeting. He couldn't have said what he was expecting. Maybe a she-Oswald, greedy and obvious but nicer to look at, or maybe a purple Ivy, vain and shrewish, with fur instead of leaves. But whatever he was expecting, it wasn't a size up from a studio suit.

She kept asking about Batman, directly and indirectly. What if anything Batman knew about his return to Gotham? Finally, Matt stood and morphed into a pantalooned caricature of an effete old world actor, swelled his hand into a human skull, and addressed it with affected gravitas.

"_What a piece of work is Bat! How annoying in reason! How infuriating in faculties! In cowl and cape, how dark and dramatic! In action, how like an agent! In apprehension, how like a pain in the ass!_ I don't know about Batman, Catwoman. Who ever knows for sure with him? But I can tell you that he hasn't paid me a 'visit' warning me to keep my mud to myself, as he's been known to. So if you're done interviewing me like some, some E! red carpet twinkie pretending to be a hardcore investigative journalist, could we possibly get on with whatever it is you want?"

She seemed downright pleased with his outburst. Here he was bracing for an Ivy-style blowup because he dared speak slightingly to the great she-rogue, and instead, Catwoman seemed almost… relieved.

"Well, if you can stay ahead of the Bat that's usually the ballgame," she purred – and god, he did like that purr. It rippled the mud.

He sat, morphing back into clay, producing a clay chair under his clay rump. Catwoman might be a lovely creature to look at, but keeping up with the ups and downs of this conversation was exhausting.

"And _will_ you be 'keeping your mud to yourself?'" she asked pointedly. "Or do you have something… lucrative… going?"

Matt sighed. He explained, yet again, to yet another opinionated first tier rogue who wouldn't listen, that he had little use for money, that whatever Catwoman brought him there to pitch, whatever "lucrative" inducements she planned to offer, there was little point.

She looked thoughtful at that. Not instantly argumentative like Oswald, but she clearly didn't get it.

"I would have thought maybe, I don't know, some kind of research to, well…"

"Cure my condition?" he said bluntly, and Catwoman nodded.

"I tried at first," he said. "I had money, even before the big Brinks job. Hell, the _Space Tempest_ action figures alone… But this isn't like diabetes or Parkinson's; it's not like there's a department of shapeshifting clay-flesh studies at Harvard Medical School. I didn't know where to begin. My skin does this—"

He held up a hand and morphed it swiftly from clay to a hand to a wing to a fin.

"Who do I see about that? Who do I hire? Where do I find them, how much do they get paid, and what kind of lab do they need?"

He sighed, reliving a bad memory. Something about his expression right then reminded Selina of Bruce.

"I went to Luthor," he said at last, eyes going dull and his clay slumping with the weight of past mistakes. "Boy what an Ishtar-meets-Waterworld screwup that was. I figured here's a guy who's legit, who can approach the right people, make the right offers. I couldn't; I'm a wanted criminal. Once they knew I was Clayface – and let's face it, I kinda had to tell'em if I wanted them to cure me – even if I knew who to go to, I could never get legit scientists to work for me. Luthor said he'd help. Yeah, sure. He pulled a few 'scientists' from one of his research labs. What exactly their specialties were I never found out. They'd take sections out of me and boil it, electrocute it, freeze it, and point a blow dryer at it for hours at a time. And all the while, I'd let Luthor tell me what to do like I was some paid flunky. No, never again."

"Not all rich men are like Luthor," Selina pointed out, thinking of that _Special Foundation Initiative §4, Humanitarian_ link in Matt Hagen's file in the Batcave.

"Everybody wants something," he said, shaking his head. "I learned that at my first Hollywood party. Everybody's always wanted a piece of me, Catwoman. I accepted that a long time ago. It's just a question of what. I'm sitting here waiting for you to tell me what it is you're after?"

She shrugged.

"Nothing actually."

"Bullshit. You asked me here to pitch me something. Now you hear that money won't tempt me to go along with your plan and impersonate some museum guard for you or whatever, but that don't change the fact that—"

"Oswald gave you the wrong idea," she said bluntly. "I don't have any offer to make, Matt. I don't want to team up, I don't want you to impersonate a guard– why on earth would I want—never mind. Look, I wanted to see you face to face because I thought you might be involved in something that I'm looking into. But now that I've talked to you, it's obvious that you're not, and so I'm… I'm really sorry to have taken up your time. That's it. That's all I have to say."

"Well that's new," he observed. "Nice delivery too. Convincing."

Selina laughed – and as much as Matt liked her look and her voice, he really liked her laugh.

"You think I'm lying," she noted.

"I think you're _acting_, and you're not bad for an amateur. Ozzy just kept trying to convince me I could use the money after all. He suggested revenge. It wasn't a very nuanced performance."

Selina looked at him carefully.

"You're an interesting man, Matt Hagen. I'm sorry we never got to know each other before," she said sincerely.

"Yeah well," he mumbled, strangely embarrassed. It had been quite a long time since anyone called him a man.

"To appease a cat's curiosity, you don't want money and you don't want revenge, so what do you want?"

"What's my motivation?" he smirked.

Selina smiled at the thespian cliché. Matt morphed into Lance Starfire, but immediately realized that was wrong and opted for the crusading attorney Grant Gifford instead.

"I'd like my life back," he said, Grant's warm summation tones dripping with sincerity. "I'd like my house in Malibu, my six Porsches, and every goddamn role Tom Cruise destroyed in the last ten years that should have been mine – not to mention a piece of that Kidman chick with the legs and that sexy accent. But none of that can happen now, so I'll settle for revenge on the person who took it all away and made it impossible for me to ever have it again. But it's not the kind of revenge Ozzy was selling, Catwoman. I don't need money or power to destroy Rebecca. I just need to find her…"

At first Selina sympathized. _Revenge on the person who took it all away,_ it resonated. Once already Matt Hagen had reminded her of Bruce, but as he went on outlining the particulars of his revenge, it became harder to empathize.

"Then I can wrap around her, ever so slowly," he was saying, "in a sticky, cloying cocoon, oozing right into her pores until she can't breathe, y'know like they almost killed Buddy Ebsen painting his skin silver for the Wizard of Oz, or the way that chick died in Goldfinger. I won't suffocate her, though, I just want her struggling to breathe. Then we'll have a nice long talk about old times."

* * *

The word servant no longer denoted an ignorant scullery maid on her hands and knees, scrubbing down floors from dusk 'til dawn. No one had to rise at 4 a.m. to stoke an oven anymore or heat water bucket-by-bucket for the master's bath. The chopping and dicing that would have once required a chef like Alfred Pennyworth to suffer a kitchen maid, he accomplished himself with a priceless button on the food processor labeled "Pulse."

The kind of staff butlers like Alfred managed, even in the late Dr. Wayne's day, were accomplished professionals not appliances with legs. The labor regulations, health insurance and pension arrangements alone for assembling and maintaining such a staff, the managerial skills, the purchasing and inventory responsibilities involved in running an operation like Wayne Manor were on par with being General Manager of a large hotel — and were paid accordingly. Alfred was quite aware that his annual salary, in the low six figures with a generous employer contribution to a 401k, was roughly three times that of people whose fanciful egalitarian principles bristled at the thought of _servants_, and often couldn't even use the word.

As such, Alfred could easily afford the expense of a night on the town for himself and Edith Mason. A revival of some musical of their era and a late supper at a suitable restaurant. He could easily afford the gesture, the only question was the ethics of making it. He had no romantic designs on Miss Mason, and would not wish to foster such notions. Still, the more he thought about scaling back the plans, the evening began to look more suggestive rather than less. A meal at a modest local restaurant rather than going into Gotham proper might be less expensive, but it was undeniably more intimate, the object clearly being the pleasure of Miss Mason's company and nothing else.

It was a predicament. Alfred very much wanted to make some definite gesture, for he had been unconscionably rude to Edith Mason and her distress was most apparent. He wanted to make a _gesture_, just that. That was his dilemma. He didn't want to "start" anything. His schedule wouldn't allow it for one thing. Wayne Manor's timetable was not that of a typical country house, Master Bruce's schedule was not that of an ordinary—

It was there he stopped, for his eye fell on the cards where he wrote out each day's menu for Miss Selina to approve. Alfred realized with an eerie pang that he was rationalizing just as Master Bruce had done for years, imagining he couldn't even entertain the possibility of a lovelife because of Batman's activities. This infuriated Alfred when Master Bruce had done it, and it irked him no less now that the excuse was proved so patently false.

Now, here he was doing precisely the same thing.

This was unacceptable. Edith Mason was a charming and delightful woman of his own age and background. He had every reason to seek out her company, and the means to show her a good time as he did so. If something came of it which might or might not inconvenience Master Bruce and his "schedule," he would deal with that when the time came. For now, he would peruse the theatre listings and restaurant reviews…

* * *

The meeting with Clayface went long enough that Selina got caught in traffic heading back to Bristol. At least it gave her time to think. She'd been so sure Clayface was behind this when she saw that file in the Batcomputer, but now that she'd talked to him, it just didn't seem possible. It was obvious he knew nothing about Bruce or the manor. He didn't care much about Batman. He didn't lust for money, power, or world conquest, so it wasn't very likely that he'd be scheming along those lines. Other than some fairly gruesome fantasies about torturing that Rebecca woman, he seemed like a fairly ordinary and borderline-nice guy.

That had been her thought as Matt concluded his plot summary for _Rebecca and the Tarpits of Doom_, starring Matt Hagen as the Tarpit and Rebecca the Bitchqueen as herself.

"Too much?" he'd winced, noting her disapproving body language.

"Not really," she'd shrugged. Bruce would consider it moral relativism, but Selina had befriended rogues before - Two-Face, Riddler - you had to make allowances, take the good with the bad. She found it easier to do with a good rogue than a bad hero, that's for sure. Her body hadn't been turned into glop. Who was she to judge?

So she'd ushered Clayface to the door, and as they said goodbye, he asked one last time "what she really wanted" from their meeting. She repeated what she'd said before, there was nothing he could to for her – unless, she added as a half-joking afterthought, he knew anything about Harley Quinn Kryptonite.

He sort of froze; his clay almost seemed to thicken for an instant. Selina didn't know him well enough to guess what it meant, and she was mentally counting steps back to the water pistol… when she realized his reaction was shock, not threatening.

"Harley Quinn's kryptonite is Joker," he said bitterly.

"True enough," Selina said softly. That interpretation hadn't occurred to her, but at the moment she was more interested in Matt's tone and behavior than reworking Walapang theories. There would be time for that later, stuck in traffic on the 10th Avenue bridge. "I'm afraid I struck a nerve," she noted kindly.

"Look, I dunno how discreet Sly is," Matt answered. "Iceberg gossip being what it is, you'll probably hear the story soon enough anyway. Harley and I had a thing, couple months now, since I've been back."

"You're the Monarch of Menace," Selina murmured, remembering Bruce's comments on Harley and a new player.

Matt shook his head and laughed.

"The Iceberg rumor mill," he noted. "Yeah, I'm the Monarch – was. Just did it for her really. We get separated for five minutes, basically, and she goes running back to Joker, can you believe it?"

"Yes," Selina said as if he'd asked whether she believed in gravity.

"Yeah, I guess," Matt said sadly.

The traffic opened up once Selina made it off the bridge, and she revved the Jag mercilessly as soon as she made the turnoff towards Bristol.

So Harley and Clayface "had a thing" —and Harley and Clayface were both Walapang clues. She didn't know how that fit in to whatever was going on with Bruce, but it was a start. Harley and Clayface had a thing, one of those links Bruce talked about that day in the cave, the key to most detective work is finding some overlooked link between the person – whoever it was – and the deed – whatever that was.

And soon it would be late enough that she could go for the third gold bar.

* * *

None of Alfred's management skills were wasted now that he was the sole member of the Wayne Manor staff. He found purchasing for the Batcave particularly invigorating, for as Mr. Arden, Mr. Pipwick, or Mr. Stevens of the various dummy corporations, he was able to indulge, in a minor way, his actor's weakness for accents. Getting shipments delivered, either to the private airstrip if they were parts for the Batmobile or Batwing, to WayneTech R&D if computer equipment, or to the Park Row Clinic if medical supplies, was as simple as pressing the right button to print out the right purchase order. Getting the items picked up from those official locations and brought to the Batcave, that was another matter. That's where the savviest personnel management was called for.

He first called Master Tim, as always. The boy was notoriously dissatisfied with the institutional food served at his boarding school and the faddishly healthful alternatives offered by his stepmother when he went home. As such, the promise of a tasty snack was usually enough to produce the final leg of any delivery. On those rare occasions when additional inducements were required, a veiled reference to unauthorized use of the game room with Master Dick (or more recently with Miss Cassie) nearly always produced the desired result. On this occasion, unfortunately, Master Tim "had exams" and Alfred was forced to try elsewhere.

Master Dick, having grown up in the house and "in the Batman-trade," as it were, needed no bribes or blackmail; if he could help, he would. Unfortunately, he was tied up in Bludhaven for another two weeks. Naturally as soon as he got back he'd be happy to…

Reluctantly, Alfred called the third name on his list, Jean Paul Valley. Mr. Valley very kindly agreed, as Alfred knew he would. Despite the unfortunate history, Alfred had no doubts that Valley was a good man at heart. He still regretted having to make the call, that unfortunate history being what it was. Quite apart from Miss Selina's aversion to the man who had taken over the Bat-mantle, Mr. Valley himself would be made most uncomfortable performing a task of this kind. And making anyone uncomfortable was anathema to Alfred. Whatever the reason, whatever the need, he hated doing it. It was a servant's responsibility to put guests at ease, and here he was doing the precise opposite… but it couldn't be helped. Master Tim had exams. Master Dick was away. And Bat-supplies could not be left unattended. Alfred could only hope the timing was such that Mr. Valley could make the required delivery without encountering Miss Selina.

* * *

"I have four gold bars hidden around the house, grounds, and cave," that's what Bruce had said. Catwoman was certain that meant one bar, at least, would be hidden in the house – check, 00570, Harley Quinn Kryptonite. One in the cave – check, 14129, Hagen, Matthew a.k.a. Clayface, Incapacitation/Immobilization/Neutralization… And one on the grounds.

While the ground security was among the best in the world for deterring, detecting, and if necessary repelling intruders entering Wayne property and moving towards the house (as well as deterring, detecting, and if necessary repelling Kryptonian busybodies flying through Wayne Manor's airspace), there was little in the way of "securing" property in a particular location the way you had alarms on a painting or combinations on a safe.

There were only two spots Catwoman knew on the vast estate that were secured the way you locked down a place to store valuables: the garage and the greenhouse. The reason for the garage was obvious: a Daimler, a Rolls, a Bentley, two Porsches, a Ferrari, and a Lamborghini. The greenhouse would be a mystery to anyone that hadn't seen the blueprints – all the blueprints, and knew what they meant. The greenhouse was built late, over what had once been the kitchen garden. It was still the kitchen garden. There were no exotic orchids or rare tropical hybrids that needed protection from the normal Gotham climate. There was nothing valuable about Alfred's little plots of fresh mint, sage and tarragon. There was nothing valuable at all. There was just a patch of soft earth that collapsed once. If you fell through it the wrong way, you would find yourself in the Batcave.

So the greenhouse was constructed simply so it could be built over the spot and locked. It was locked well, but there was certainly nothing Catwoman couldn't circumvent. A simple wire splice and a timed pulse from another Kittlemeier's exclusive fooled the door's magnet sensor into thinking its circuit hadn't been broken. She picked the lock, opened the door, and that was that. The bar was under a layer of topsoil in a freshly planted flatbed. The serial number was 00339. And Project Walapang's answer to that was…

Hm.

An article on blood stains. Selina noticed the original files that had been doctored were all dry and fairly basic criminology subjects. She guessed this was so no one would disturb them. What were the chances that Barbara, Tim, or even Cassie would go looking for info on Kastle-Meyer tests? And Bruce himself probably mastered this stuff by age 12.

She scrolled down, and right there, between a graph on DNA typing and an illustration on proper swabbing technique, was list of names:

Bruce Wayne  
George Corey  
Larry Irvine  
Ted Layne  
Frank Endicott  
James Grimes  
John Forbes  
Fred Johnson  
Ben Wilson  
Steven Gardner

* * *

…to be continued…


	7. Not Your Kink

_Chapter 7: Not Your Kink_

* * *

Ted Layne, Frank Endicott, James Grimes, John Forbes…

Selina recognized the names from a dozen Wayne functions. They were all major contributors to the Foundation, some were board members and she had the impression that others had been in the past. She searched her memory for the introductions Bruce made at those first parties they attended together. She hadn't paid that much attention since she already knew most of them, both officially from similar parties she'd attended on her own, and unofficially as "the north penthouse at the Excelsior Towers with the forged Vermeer and family 'jewels' that were all CZ and paste." Bruce's introductions served only to supply Wayne-specific details on these men: at that time Frank Endicott was on the board of both Wayne Enterprises and the Foundation, Ted Layne… damnit, she just couldn't remember. She remembered it was a Wayne Foundation "League of Nations" Charity Event where she met him. She remembered that Gladys Ashton-Larraby took an instant dislike to Clark Kent of the Daily Planet. She remembered that bothering Bruce although it meant nothing to Selina at the time. She remembered being far more focused on Randolph Larraby, quite drunk and quite fixated on her breasts. She remembered nothing of Ted Layne other than that he was there. John Grimes was a blur as well, although Mrs. Grimes was wearing a spectacular pair of Harry Winstons and the truism "the more unfaithful the husband, the more spectacular the jewel collection" was uttered more than once in the ladies room.

Grimes, Layne, Endicott… She just couldn't remember, which meant it was time to reevaluate Alfred as a confidant. In favor: he was Alfred. He knew everything about everybody and he was more than discreet. Against: Bruce was being awfully careful about something or someone and she still didn't know who, what, or why. In favor: It was only a list of names; it's not like she'd be tipping anything about gold bars, Harley Quinn, Kryptonite, Clayface, or Bruce's odd behavior. In favor: She wasn't very good at this. She'd said it before and she'd say it again: detective work wasn't her kink. So far she'd found 3 bars out of 4, she didn't know a damn thing more than when she started, and she damn near drowned poor Walapang. It would be good to talk to someone, even if she couldn't tell him much. So she copied down the names and went upstairs to find Alfred.

* * *

Jean Paul Valley never made a Bat- pickup before. Two stops. The first was at the Wayne Tech campus, and he felt entirely in his element. Sure he pretended to be a simple delivery man, but he could look around the room, the communal arrangement of the open cubicles, and place every person he saw: team leader, coder, coder, coder, hardware geek, GIRL! (must be a graphic artist working on the interface) and next to her, last cubicle on the end… coder.

He picked up the microchips as if he had no idea what they were, then stole a last look at the coder whose cubicle was next to the artist's. The huge Star Wars poster tacked to the wall of the cube is what first drew his attention, but he found himself focusing on the smaller details that denoted the occupant's profession: the pyramid of Mountain Dew cans, the bird's nest of peripheral devices sitting on the corner of his desk, the matched Superman/Batman action figures sitting atop his monitor. That could have been him if things had worked out differently. No Azrael. No lineage. No duty to anything higher than holding down a job, paying his rent, and working up the guts to talk to that artist a couple times a week. He wouldn't know who Bruce Wayne was other than a name on his paycheck or a picture in the annual report. He wouldn't know Batman other than as a small plastic action figure on his monitor. He sure wouldn't be making a supply run out to Wayne Manor. He'd be sitting with those guys eating stale Indian takeout, bluffing the guys on the browser team about who was farther behind and whose delays would push back the launch date, maybe even betting a keg on the outcome like he and Scott did with a rival dorm at MIT…

What might have been. Shit.

* * *

Selina found Alfred reading in his room. He sprung up as always, asking if he could get her something, while she refused and begged him not to get up. They sat and, after a momentary awkwardness, she pushed forward a slip of paper and asked if he recognized the names. He read them over, then leaned forward with his elbow on the table, his thumb under his chin and his index finger placed thoughtfully to his lips. Selina watched and waited, fascinated. Alfred consulting his mental rolodex was unlike anything she'd ever seen. She'd seen Bruce's wheels turn, both in the cowl and out, Eddie's, Harvey's, Oswald's. But this was something new.

"Eight… no, ten years ago. Yes, ten years," Alfred said at last. "These men all served on the board of the Wayne Foundation, Miss. As you know, directors serve three-year terms, staggered, so there is both change and continuity each year. That particular board sat ten years ago. The theme of the winter fundraiser that year was Monte Carlo night, and since Mr. Grimes headed the fundraising subcommittee, the event was held at one of his hotels rather than Robinson Plaza. That was also the year the Park Row Clinic received a Conway-Novick endowment, quite prestigious, in recognition of Dr. Thompkins' excellent work."

Alfred paused, his face darkening slightly. Had it been Bruce, Selina would have known that he was either cataloguing his memories to recall some additional detail or else deciding whether or not to reveal a certain piece of delicate information; but while she had become quite adept at interpreting every expression and facial mannerism on Batman's face, the usually stoic butler was actually a tougher nut to crack.

"Anything else?" she prompted.

"Yes," Alfred finally replied, "I believe this was… eh, well, it was the year the board of the Foundation experienced a rather unpleasant episode with Poison Ivy, Miss."

"Ivy," Selina repeated darkly.

"_Yes,_ Miss," Alfred said with emphasis.

"Tell me everything," she ordered.

"W-ell," Alfred began hesitantly, noting the emergence of a Catwoman voice he seldom heard. "I dare say Master Bruce may have been somewhat selective in the details he made known to me."

"I see the Pennyworth tact mechanism has been engaged," Selina noted aloud. "Alfred, please, it's important. Tell me everything that happened, and don't spare me the gory details."

He nodded.

"Well Miss, I gather that Miss Isley approached each gentleman individually and incognito. In Master Bruce's case, he was lunching at the Empire Club. A strange woman came up and kissed him, and then apologized, saying she mistook him for someone she knew… presumably someone with whom she was on kissing terms, which I must say, in my day was not considered… that is to say, in a public restaurant, Miss."

"Typically Ivy," Selina muttered. "Go on."

"That night," Alfred went on, his growing discomfort becoming apparent, "the gentlemen were compelled to gather at some remote location, and…"

He paused and pursed his lips, clearly distressed by the words to come next and searching for an accurate but non-inflammatory way to say it. Selina realized that telling Alfred to cast tact aside was like asking Batman to look the other way while she left with someone else's diamonds. It violated his core programming and he simply wouldn't do it.

"They went to this remote location," Selina prompted gently.

"Yes, Miss, an empty theatre, I believe. And… And their _ condition_ in so far as being responsive to the lady was… intensified."

There. He got it out. And Selina was relieved, as much as she was absurdly and retroactively pissed at Poison Ivy.

"Go on," she repeated, and again Alfred nodded.

"The gentlemen were commanded to sign over their assets to Poison Ivy's control, and to keep the incident a secret. Master Bruce later reported that he tried several times to inform Commissioner Gordon, myself, and financial officers from the Foundation about what had transpired, but no matter what means he attempted, he was always prevented from doing so."

"But he seemed okay apart from that?" Selina asked thoughtfully.

"Yes Miss, I would imagine it was analogous to a post-hypnotic suggestion. Apart from not being able to speak about the incident directly or indirectly, Master Bruce was able to function at home, at Wayne Enterprises, and as Batman just as always. That was the saving grace of the situation, if I might so phrase it, Miss. In the course of 'affecting' Bruce Wayne, Poison Ivy had also affected Batman, hence Batman was aware of the larceny being attempted. He worked on the case alone and in secret until he was able to uncover an accomplice and made that culprit confess before the police. Once Ivy's influence over the gentlemen was known, the coerced documents were invalidated and the matter was very quickly resolved."

Selina said nothing, but her brow was knit as she considered the ramifications of that type of greening. She had Harley Quinn and Clayface clues, Harley and Clayface "had a thing." And now a Poison Ivy clue, a Poison Ivy clue of a very particular kind, one that referenced a very particular kind of greening. If Ivy somehow got to Bruce…

But damnit, she tried that only a year ago. Bruce figured out she'd be coming after him and he was ready for her. So she couldn't have gotten to him, could she?

But _if_ she had, if she had somehow greened either Bruce Wayne or Batman, then his odd behavior began to look very different. No fear of super-eavesdropping or shapeshifting imposters explained why he would come back from patrol and walk right past her sleeping in the Batcave, in a chair he knew was miserably uncomfortable, instead of waking her and bringing her up to bed. But if Ivy had got to him, then that was the answer. He just wouldn't care.

Alfred was curious, both about Selina's questions and her distant expression as she pondered the answers. But he had enough experience with Master Bruce talking over cases that he'd developed a keen sense for when to probe and when to let his companion think. This looked like a time to stand by attentively and let Miss Selina think. When she was ready to resume…

"The garden," she murmured absently.

The day she found him at the window in the drawing room, maybe he wasn't looking at 'his city' across the river, maybe he was looking at something closer, something right outside that window. Maybe he was looking _ at the garden_. Pining for 'his goddess,' she thought miserably.

He even asked to meet in the garden to give Catwoman the security job. She replayed the scene in her mind, every detail now seeming like a razor glinting with new significance. That pointed defining of roles when he gave her the job: _Bruce Wayne _wanted to meet with _Catwoman_. Was that some loophole he'd found in Ivy's commands, following the letter of her order but sneaking a message out past the spirit of it? Maybe _Batman_ couldn't act but Bruce Wayne could? Then there was the way he'd looked at her so searchingly before saying what he wanted, the way he'd seemed about to speak and then turned away… the way he'd _looked around the garden_ and then spoke so carefully, "A complete analysis and overhaul of manor security," _as if testing out each word before speaking it. _

He _was_ testing out each word. He was trying to send a message indirectly and didn't know if he could do it. Holy god, he was… Project Walapang was an SOS. He was in trouble, and he was calling for help.

Selina looked up at Alfred and wondered how much she should say. All she had at this point was a theory. It was a really good theory, but if she was wrong… Better to be cautious just a little longer, not go shooting streams of salt water at hapless bats for no reason.

She thanked Alfred warmly for his help and stood to leave. But he stood too and coughed in that distinct "we're not done yet" way he had that was so reminiscent of Batman.

"Given the nature of our discussion, Miss, this might not be the ideal time to introduce the topic," Alfred said, the Pennyworth tact mechanism engaged once more as he saw the chance to check a housekeeping matter off his todo list (while pressing Miss Selina, ever so gently, for some detail about her inquiry). "But I was wondering if you had occasion to notice the new centerpiece in the dining room."

Selina's eyes narrowed, the sharp snap-focus of a predator sensing prey.

"A centerpiece? A new centerpiece? As in extra flowers?" she asked pointedly.

"In a manner of speaking," Alfred said mildly. He reacted to hostile felinity just as he did to blustery Battitude, by not reacting at all. He calmly explained the history of the fifth flower arrangement, his decision to reinstate it during that brief period when the dining room was again in daily use, and his certainty that Edith Mason, the charming and refined lady at the floral shop, was most eager to hear how her efforts had been received.

"Alfred," Catwoman decreed in the tone she once used to confront the most vicious and violent men of the underworld. "As mistress of the manor, you have my heartfelt and unambiguous permission to have as many dear, precious flowers as you like brutally and savagely ripped from the warm embrace of Mother Earth. If Bruce or anyone else has a problem with that, you send'em to me— _Please_."

She punctuated the last word with a vicious clawing motion, turned on her heel, and left.

* * *

There was no bittersweet musing at Jean Paul's second stop. To the workmen at the executive airstrip, he was nothing more than paperwork with legs: ten canisters Jet-A1 aviation fuel standard, ten canisters with a higher antioxidant mix, and five with a richer mix of corrosion inhibitors, sign here. And here. Initial this one. And that one. Now I gotta make a photocopy of your ID. Hey you look kinda familiar. You didn't go to PS 18 didja? No, oh well. Too bad about the Knights last night, huh. The _Knights_. What do you live in a cave? The _Knights_. They lost. Again. 43 - 7. Well here's your ID back, now initial it there please.

* * *

Plumage.

Say what you would about nature (when Poison Ivy wasn't within earshot), but it bestowed the most brilliant and beautiful plumage on the males. It was not becoming for a male bird to sit humbly in the corner and keep his splendor a secret. No, a male bird was made to strut. –kwak!

Oswald couldn't guess how much extra cash he would make from the Catwoman-Clayface teamup he'd arranged, but it would certainly cover a few new suits. –kwak– It would, that is, if he actually paid for them, which of course he would not. Paying was for peasants.

He waddled to the backroom and searched. While he distanced himself from the penny-ante minutia of his operation, he knew that Snipe still had a half-carton of blank American Express cards left from the Star City hijacking. He was disappointed to see they were green. He preferred gold or, on rare occasions, platinum, but green were all that was left. He took one, returned to his office, and extracted a small flat printer from his desk.

Now for a name.

He took a folder from his desk and thumbed through the printouts for that article. Yes here it was, Nigma had sent it to him over that worldwide inter-webby-mailnet.

"New multicolored bird found in India," it read. Perfect.

_Bugun Liocichla_ the new species was called, what a splendid name. He copied this onto the card printer, then returned his attention to the article. "The bird has a black cap, a bright yellow patch around the eyes and yellow, crimson, black and white patches on the wing." Why that sounded charming –kwak– he would consider that for his new suit. –kwak– Black hat, yellow vest, touch of crimson –kwak– "Who is that dashing fellow?" "Why that's Bugun Liocichla, of the Nob Hill Liocichlas." –kwak–

* * *

Returning to the Batcave, the first thing Selina checked was the hologram Batman used to map out his nightly patrols. It still highlighted Blackgate, the flower market, and Museum Mile. That was days ago. If he hadn't mapped out a new itinerary since that night, it didn't seem likely that he was patrolling at all. She checked his logs… And sure enough, the last entry was for that same night. He'd investigated the security breach at Blackgate (and Selina chuckled, spotting each detail of the Monarch of Menace escape that only made sense only if you knew he was Clayface). Then Batman made a slow pass through the area around the flower market and noted several environmental features around Ivy's greenhouse. And then he met Catwoman at the museum as they'd arranged. Selina read that last section with interest. She knew she shouldn't waste time on it. She was there; she already knew what happened… But she couldn't tear herself away from the words on the screen. Bruce's – no, _Batman's_ private thoughts as he watched Catwoman do what she did best. It was… astonishing.

** "She was so entirely in her element. It was impossible not to be affected by this most fundamental part of her bubbling to the surface with such passion and energy. This ability to penetrate the most carefully guarded perimeter, to slip past the most rigorous defenses and sidestep the most sensitive triggers, to let no nuisance of a lock, (or a law, or a crimefighter) come between her and her prize. She wants to do a gallery tomorrow night, Gallery Athena. I'm actually looking forward to it." **

There was nothing more after that. He hadn't made a single entry since that night. And Batman never skipped the logs after patrol.

He hadn't been patrolling, by now she was sure of it. He got changed each night and drove off into the city, but he didn't patrol…

He went back to Ivy's greenhouse.

She had no proof of course, of any of it. It was still nothing but theory, and she was sure the great detective would insist on more investigation, scrupulous marshalling of facts, and rational analysis of same. But Selina was not a detective and Catwoman didn't need to prove anything in a court of law. Her gut told her she was right and she trusted it. Each night he was going back to Ivy. He was going back to Ivy… to have his noose tightened.

* * *

Humility was for dull hens with stubby brown feathers. It was not for Oswald Cobblepot. Oswald was the first to say he kept up with the times. He kept up with the times –kwak– better than villains half his age.

The world had changed. You couldn't make up any old credit card number like you used to. –kwak– This darned identity theft. Because of that worldwide inter-mail-ee webnet, every third pigeon was getting plucked just sitting at home reading about the New Bugun bird found in India. So now they had a dozen ways to spot a fake credit card number. Every little hot dog stand was wired in and hooked up.

So Oswald waddled to the bar, which was equally wired in and hooked up. He thumbed through the previous night's receipts until he found someone he didn't care for. Pradesh from the White Dragon Triad. Perfect. 30-day tab was 2 weeks in arrears. Pinched Raven and Wren. Had a face like a ferret. Perfect. He took down the number from Pradesh's receipt and returned to his office to finish stamping out Bugun Liocichla's credit card.

* * *

Catwoman hissed at the screen and closed Batman's duty log. It took a little trial and error to find the file she wanted, but finally:

** … …:Threat Analysis: Summary Overview:… …  
Isley, Pamela a.k.a. Poison Ivy  
Biochemical Influence  
(cont.)**

** all pheromone based, but smell isn't the only means of transference. Smell is the _fastest-acting_, as the nasal passages have direct access to the brain. Other means such as injection (typically via thorn puncture) or tactile (typically a trans-dermal salve introduced through a kiss) must travel through the bloodstream and hence take longer to have an effect, but all methods seem equally potent once the victim is enthralled. Since anti-tox must build up for 2-3 weeks before providing reliable immunity, and since the lag from thorn or kiss exposure is no more than 5-15 minutes depending on the subject's metabolism, very little can be gained so far as **

Selina started. There was a sharp noise in the Batmobile hangar – and she cursed herself for wasting time earlier reading the museum log – but there had been no loud rumble from the car. She'd been lost in thought while she was reading, but she couldn't be so lost that she wouldn't notice the roar of the Batmobile shaking the walls of the cavern. This was something else. She unfurled her whip and went to investigate.

* * *

Outrageous! IT WAS OUTRAGEOUS!

He, Oswald Cobblepot, arrested! It was, it was, it wasn't possible.

_Of course_ he had tried to bribe the policemen who carted him off, he was being arrested!

_Of course_ he had struck the manager on the head with his umbrella, the boorish brigand was calling the police to take him away!

_Of course_ he had threatened the doorman, the thrice-damned thug was trying to detain him while the boorish brigand manager called the police!

And of course he had bit the sales clerk, _he had cast aspersions on the legitimacy of Oswald's Bugun Liocichla credit card!_

Now he had to endure the indignity of a ride to the 12th precinct, a decidedly _proletarian_ precinct –kwak– and horror-of-horrors be fingerprinted before he could call Raven to call Judge Bungaree. Who knew how much that would cost him. 10-grand in the short run, that was the going rate. But in the long run, what would it cost? Having to use a pocket-judge like Bungaree for a personal matter. It was bad for business, bad for Iceberg business. Judge Bungaree was kept on retainer for cleaning up after Oswald's agents, not Oswald himself!

But what choice did he have? He owned the Iceberg personally. If he was arrested, he could lose his liquor license. Then what? The nightclub was only a piddling percentage of his income, but it was his visible income, his legitimate income – and most of all, it was his pride and joy. He simply could not lose the position it afforded him in Gotham's underworld. No, he could not jeopardize it, he simply could not.

So he had Raven contact the good Judge Bungaree, in a few hours the whole unpleasant episode would be expunged. He couldn't say what it would cost him down the line.

He would have to be more careful in the future.

* * *

The first time Catwoman met Jean Paul Valley, he was what other rogues called "AzBat" or "the Imposter," and what Selina herself would always think of as "_that awful thing_ inside the Bat costume." Now that he'd foresworn the Bat mantle, she managed to tolerate Azrael – barely – and had even found it possible to see the man inside the helmet as something-less-than-completely-annoying.

Nevertheless, she would never forget or completely forgive that first encounter. She was getting a deadly neurotoxin out of circulation and he accused her of stealing it for terrorists. The toxin was stored in awkward twenty kilo canisters – not unlike the tanks of jet fuel Jean Paul was unloading now. Quite like them in fact, and she watched with a cruel, silent cat-smile as he unloaded tank after tank from the van and stacked them in the corner.

He turned finally, feeling the cold, malevolent eyes watching him.

Not a single word was said aloud.

There was no need.

The scene was such a perfect reversal of that first meeting, the words of that night replayed just as distinctly in both their memories.

_"On a Catwalk? My haven't we changed." _

_"And you. From mere theft to terrorist blackmail, or at least an accomplice." _

_"That's not funny." _

It went on. Silent. Mocking. Contemptuous.

_"That's close enough." _

_"You're right. Close enough to realize you're not him." _

Selina gave a scornful half-smile, turned, and left the hangar.

_Pheromones._ It was her pet name for Jean Paul Valley, because he lacked them. He wasn't good for much in Selina's view, but this chance meeting did accomplish one thing: it suggested a way to proceed on the other pheromones matter.

* * *

Women. They had to play their little games. Actresses were the worst but she-rogues were a close second. He knew Catwoman had an agenda when she'd called him to her lair the first time. He _told_ her he knew. He asked her _pointblank_. But would she admit it? No. Would she just come out and tell him? Of course not. So he left a phone number. That way when she was ready to come clean, she wouldn't have to go through Oswald again. He figured she'd wait a week, tops. He never expected to be returning to the cat lair in less than twelve hours.

Matt certainly wasn't angry about the development. Selina Kyle was the hottest woman in Gotham who he hadn't pissed off and who hadn't pissed him off. He put a lot of stock in that. A one-on-one sitdown with Catwoman, just the two of them, it was like location shooting in Rome: sure the producers sent you for reasons of their own, but you were still in Rome, getting VIP treatment on someone else's tab. What's not to enjoy?

Catwoman wasted no time. This was a cards-on-the-table meeting: Matt liked looking at her and didn't bother hiding it. Catwoman had an agenda and wouldn't hide it either.

"Who else knew the truth about you and Harley?" she asked bluntly.

"Well, it was common knowledge that Monarch and Harley were an item," he answered amiably. "But if you mean 'me and Harley' as in knowing I was the Monarch, Oswald figured it out straight off. And then later, of course, Pammy butted her nose in."

There was an abrupt shift in the room. While he had no literal sense of hot or cold, Matt would have sworn the temperature dropped a good fifteen degrees.

"Don't get me wrong, I'm not making myself out to be the victim on that score," he added quickly. "I'm the one who told her. Figured if I didn't, Harley would probably let it slip. Girls do talk, you know. And, well, you know the history, me and Pammy."

"Still sore about the potpourri?" Catwoman asked wryly.

"Among other things."

"So long story short, she was hostile," Selina guessed.

"I guess so. She didn't say it in so many words at first, but the incoherent shrieking and physical violence was a good indication."

"Hostile enough, would you think, that she'd like to kill you? Or have you killed?"

"Without getting into scientific and philosophical discussions of whether that's possible, oh yeah. This was Joker level hatred, at least. Maybe she would have cooled down eventually if it hadn't been for the sequel at Arkham, but I distinctly heard the words 'kill him' after that."

"Then I have one more question," Catwoman said softly. "A delicate question."

He scrunched up the mud on the upper right of his forehead to mimic raising an eyebrow.

"I'm a man made of clay, Catwoman, I don't think there are any more 'delicate' questions."

She smiled, then frowned, then sighed, then spoke.

"Matt, Ivy can't 'affect you,' right?"

He laughed, a deep, rumbling laugh that made his clay ripple.

"Oh she can affect me plenty, Catty. She can annoy the living hell out of me. She can actually make me consider, for about ten uninterrupted seconds, that there are worse creatures running around this world than Rebecca. But if you mean her pheromones, I can't even smell them let alone be affected by them."

"In that case, you're right. I do want something from you, Matt Hagen. I told you I didn't, and now it turns out I do."

Selina noticed three things simultaneously: Hagen's clay was thickening as it had on their last meeting. She guessed this was how he registered strong emotion. His expression, on the other hand, had frozen, and that made the clay-thickening seem a little more threatening. Then there was the ooze. Six slow tendrils of creepy horror movie ooze had trickled down from his body and were seeping across the floor towards her chair.

"Matthew," she said with a forced, firm calm. "Is there something I should know?"

"You _seem_ like a really nice lady," he said slowly, "for a she-rogue and all."

The ooze had reached her feet. Selina didn't want to be rude; if this action wasn't as threatening as it looked, she didn't want to offend the man she was appealing to for help. But instinct said that this oozing thing was threatening, and instinctively she raised her feet slightly off the floor.

The oozing clay responded faster than she would have thought possible, splashing up like water and coiling around her as it hardened into a very strong, viscous cocoon that stretched from her shoulders down to her ankles.

"What the hell!" she screamed, thrashing wildly.

The cocoon contracted, shrinking from her shoulder down to her hips and from her ankle up to her knee. He was holding less of her, but holding it tighter.

"You seem nice," Matt repeated icily, "but I've heard words like that before, Cat. Words just like that. 'I told you I didn't want anything, but now it turns out I do.' Rebecca said that.

"See, I thought she was an actress when we met. Most of the hot women you meet at the studio are. Two, three dates later after five, six times in the sack, comes out that she's a suit. Never took an acting class in her life, never stepped in front of a camera. Turns out she did product placements, get 007 to drive a BMW in the new Bond flick, get Charlie's Angels to drink a Pepsi. Came as a bit of a shock, finding out she was connected to the serious money going into movies, _my_ movies…

"Now she didn't actually _say_ she was an actress. Didn't lie, she just let me assume. She didn't have any reason to lie, y'see. Nothing in it for her. I had no say whether my character uses a Nokia or a Motorola in the movie. They sit me in a Beemer, I drive a Beemer. They sit me in a Corvette, I drive the 'Vette. Nothing in it for her. 'Matt, sweetie, I don't want a thing. Really. Just having a good time together, aren't we?'

"And we were. We did. She waited six months before even hinting. Then it all came out. Seems she was also handling a pharmaceutical company. Not something they can easily slide into a script like a Domino's pizza. Hero's friend walks in carrying a pizza box, no big deal right? But the hero's friend can't just casually mention he's taking Vrickosak for painful anal warts, 'contact your physician, caution may be habit forming, discontinue use if drowsiness or vomiting ensues for more than sixteen hours, but hey Grant, I ran those plates like you wanted and your hunch was right, McCafferty lives in the Bronx!'"

"MATT!" Catwoman interrupted, punching helplessly at the clay cocoon that still encased her thighs. "I'd be a much more sympathetic listener if you weren't, y'know…"

She pushed down on her clay prison as if trying to squeeze out of a skirt that was too tight.

Clayface watched her struggle for a few moments, then tentatively released her.

"Thank you," Selina said flatly.

He nodded, not exactly ashamed, but aware that his reaction had been a little over the top.

"So conventional product placements wouldn't work," she said, inviting him to continue the story.

"Surprised you were listening," Matt said. "Sorry about that. You hit a nerve."

"I noticed."

"I never told anyone what really happened," Matt said, taking on his old shape and appearance, the way he'd looked that day in Aspen with Rebecca.

"Maybe it's time you did," Selina suggested.

"Conventional product placements wouldn't work," he nodded, "but Rebecca had a plan. I could use this one product on the Q.T. It was _ not_ called 'Facelift in a Jar' or whatever that urban legend says. They hadn't got around to finding a consumer-friendly name yet. There was some focus group in Boston working on that. The product I was pitched was called PB16-L, ain't that sexy."

Selina smiled sadly, the cynical humor about the blackest event of his life reminding her of Harvey.

"Rebecca's plan was that I'd use PB16-L for a role and get the credit for a miraculous transformation _'You know just like De Niro putting on that sixty pounds for Raging Bull.' _I said no. If I was going to get a De Niro rep for this stunning physical change, I sure wasn't gonna turn around and say it came out of a needle. Plus, the whole idea of injections into my face. This was ten years before botox. _Shooting stuff into your face?_ It was sickest goddamn thing I ever heard."

"You never agreed?" Selina asked, beginning to guess what was coming, and beginning to understand the malevolent creativity of Matt's revenge scenarios if her guess was right.

"I never agreed," he said distinctly. "All I agreed to was skiing in Aspen with Rebecca. Did a little Jack Daniels and coke with her that night, but… Well, we'd done that before and I never passed out, let's leave it at that."

"She drugged you."

"She drugged me. I know it. Not a doubt in my mind. While I was out, she injected me with that… that fucking poison. Not sure how many times she did it or how long it took, but by the time we got back to L.A., I was hooked."

Selina found she believed the story that far. Something about his impassioned bitterness, not to mention his previous remarks about this Rebecca and the way he'd attacked Selina when she inadvertently echoed the other woman's words. But then Hagen swore he never used PB16-L voluntarily, that he was a helpless addict for the next three months in which he'd used it. Selina was skeptical of that part. It was certainly possible, but it was just as possible that he dabbled quite willingly once he saw what it could do for him. If that were true and he preferred to forget that part of his history, she saw no harm in it.

After about three months, Matt said, he had "some kind of reaction," the life threatening kind, the kind where they use the paddles in the ambulance. He woke up in a hospital emergency room while some suit from the studio press office spun the kind of story they spin when they assume their star's been freebasing.

"That's where the urban legend goes off the rails," Matt said dryly. "PB16-L was never produced commercially. 'Hey look, we made two grand off this guy before he died and his family sued us for forty million' does not make for a very happy report to the stockholders. Daggett Industries did what any company would do, they buried it and then they buried the shovel. They gave the researchers nice fat retirement packages; they'd all signed NDAs, the end. Only loose end was…" he stopped and grinned. "Yours truly."

Selina nodded sadly.

"So they decided to bury _you_."

"Nah. I guess they might have, or they might have tried to pay me off first if they'd known about me. I don't know what Rebecca told them about me. I do know that everything she told _me_ about _them_ was a boldfaced lie. The only one that knew exactly what Rebecca was setting up was Rebecca.

"And at the time, I could choose between film projects that paid three million a pop. I could work up enough press to bury her just clearing my throat. She herself, without the company, didn't have any kind of resources to buy me or fight me or… So, she used the one thing she did have: PB16-L. Little more cocaine, a lot of vodka, and this time, instead of injecting the stuff under my skin, she pumps it into an artery. Twelve hour of convulsions later…" He glorped into his natural appearance. "…Clayface."

* * *

Jean Paul thought it was entirely possible that was the worst eighty seconds of his life. He couldn't say for certain. That would involve drudging up the memories of other phenomenally bad moments, examining them in all their hideous detail, and making comparisons. Not being a masochist, he didn't feel that was worth the effort. It was enough to stand where he was, satisfied that his legs were not as shaky as they felt, and be happy he hadn't thrown up on Batman's jet fuel.

What was it about that woman? Did he kill a cat in a former life or something?

They'd had bad moments before, god knows, but there was always some part of Azrael in the picture. This was just him, it just happened –boom– took him completely off guard.

Azrael hadn't said a word since it happened, he noticed. Not that Jean Paul could blame him; god knows he'd be hiding under a rock if he could. He wondered if Az would mention it when he decloaked or just add scalloped epaulettes to the armor.

* * *

Matt Hagen was an action star. Few of his performances were of the cathartic, emotionally wrenching variety. But even he had taken classes in "the Method." He'd performed the exercises, he'd "accessed" all the latent anger at his father, resentment of his mother, and lust for his babysitter until blah-blah-blah-blah-blah he finally achieved "the breakthrough." It was bullshit. It was exhausting. And it was unpleasant. But at the end of it, there was a quiet, peaceful _lightness_ like he'd never felt before.

As he finished telling Catwoman how Clayface came into being, he felt a hint of that same buoyant calm.

"So yeah, I got screwed," he concluded soberly. "I didn't do anything worse than most 'Hollywood bad boys.' Some dames, some drugs, yeah, sure. I'm no saint; I'm just an actor. They wind up an _E! True Hollywood Story _and I wind up next to Killer Croc in Bartholomew's anger management session, tell me that's right."

"You'll get no argument from me," Selina agreed readily. "You were thoroughly screwed."

He smiled and chuckled at the anticlimax.

"I was thoroughly screwed," he repeated.

"Thoroughly," Selina agreed.

He nodded.

And she nodded.

There it was. A quiet peaceful lightness.

"So," he announced, trying to find his way back from monologue to conversation. "You're obviously very interested in Poison Ivy—eh, not THAT kind of interested," he added quickly. "This idea you want to pitch me, can I hazard a guess that this is something Pammy _isn't_ going to like?"

Catwoman smiled – quite a lovely smile, even if it was a touch evil-looking.

"Then I'm game," he said in his most charming love scene delivery. "Especially if it means spending a little more time with you."

* * *

…to be continued…


	8. Uh Oh

_Chapter 8: Uh Oh_

* * *

Matt Hagen's least favorite producer on three continents was Rick Simons. It wasn't that the man was a criminal; he was a producer, that much was a given. It wasn't even the lost backers, cast and venue changes brought about by his constant efforts to cheat everyone in sight. It was _the way _each of those reversals was announced, gathering the cast together and proclaiming, "I have some good news and some bad news." Good news: the show is transferring to the King's Theatre in London's West End; the bad news is half of you will be sacked and recast from British Equity. The good news is those of you who aren't sacked will receive an additional 200 per week. The bad news is there's an extension clause, so you can't take any other work for six months although the chances are practically nil that the show will run past August.

Now that Matt knew what Catwoman really wanted, Rick's "good news and bad news" was taking on entirely new dimensions.

She had smiled, a really lovely smile from a really lovely woman, and that was quite beguiling on its own. More beguiling still is what it meant. It meant: _No, whatever Catwoman's plan was, Ivy wasn't going to like it one bit. _

"Then I'm game," Matt had agreed, adding in his most charming love scene delivery, "Especially if it means spending a little more time with you."

"Pammy isn't going to like it," Catwoman assured him quickly, "but I'm afraid it will mean spending time with her, not with me."

Matt had to think about that.

But then those feline eyes twinkled wickedly and she added, "But she won't know that."

"Ha," he said, realizing that (of course) Catwoman wanted him for the kind of imposture only Clayface could deliver. "As long as I'm there to see the look on her face when the curtain comes down," he said pleasantly.

So yes, there was good news and bad news, but the good outweighed the bad— except they weren't done yet.

"The thing is, Matt," Selina continued in a new voice, "I think it actually _is _possible to kill you. I think it's Batman who knows how. And I think Ivy might have gotten to him to make him tell her how to do it."

Matt's reaction to _that_ little bulletin was understandably varied:

The thought that he could "die" was not greeted with the dismay and terror most people would consider normal. One of the repeated (and disturbing) questions raised but never answered by Luthor's "experts" was whether or not he could age. The idea of being, for lack of a better word, _ immortal_, the idea of _still being Clayface_ in three- or four- or five-hundred years, was not exactly appealing. But if he could die, that meant there could, ultimately, be a way out if he found himself in 2507 watching 579th Annual Academy Awards…

Of course, the idea of _IVY_ killing him _today_ was not a popular one. Completely intolerable. That woman's psychotic need get the upper hand with anything male – and how funny that the men she hated the most were the ones she couldn't green, the ones who could actually challenge the premise that everyone _loved_ the Goddess Beautiful – how pathetically typical. Even Batman deserved better than that.

As for Batman, well, it figured. If anyone would work out some way to, to… that was a morbid and depressing thought, and Matt preferred to skip over the possible details of his theoretical demise. But it figured.

He sighed.

Clayface didn't particularly _like_ Batman, but being Ivy's "love slave" wasn't a fate he'd wish on any man. It sounded like a new circle of hell.

"Then you'll help," Catwoman asked when he'd dismounted his verbal seesaw.

"God yes," he answered.

Like before, he felt as if Rick Simons had gathered the cast together and dumped a shitload of good news and bad news on them, but at the end of tireless negotiations from a team of top-notch agents, a reasonable balance had been achieved between the good and the bad.

That is, there was balance until a deliriously happy Catwoman threw her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek – although, since he wasn't expecting it, it was only a soft, cheekish area at the time she hit it and she came away all smudged with mud and looking so pleased and grateful. She was really something to look at, and now she seemed so happy and all smudged with mud that way…

It was as close to physical pleasure as Matt Hagen could get.

* * *

There is simply a fixed amount of frustration and disappointment a human being can take in one lifetime, and Dr. Bartholomew felt he was in serious danger of exceeding his limit before he ran out of life. He had tried to put aside Patient J's unseemly interest in Ina Garten and enjoy the Barefoot Contessa as before, but it was hopeless. If it was anyone but Patient J…

He tried a few other shows. Rachel Ray and Giada De Laurentiis seemed like lovely women, but the spark just wasn't there. He couldn't say if it was the style of their cooking or the pace of the shows, but the magic ingredient of the Barefoot Contessa simply wasn't there.

Since he couldn't replace the cure, Bartholomew saw no other alternative but to cut out the disease. This consisted of a brief daydream of killing the Patient J in a number of cruel ways the mad clown himself had outlined in countless sessions. They were all described as too quick and painless an end for "Batsy" but suitable for less hated victims such as Robin, Nightwing or F. Murray Abraham. It was a pleasant way to pass the time driving to work, but Bartholomew knew he did not have murder in his heart. No, if he was going to cut the disease out of his life, it wasn't Patient J or even the entire criminal wing of Arkham that had to go, it was Bartholomew himself.

Quit his job? When the thought first sparked, it was unthinkable. "Can a _thought_ be un_think_able?" a corner of his mind asked in Patient Nigma's voice – and that's when the "unthinkable" thought erupted from a tiny spark into a raging inferno of promise and hope!

Quit.  
His.  
Job.

He had a nest egg, he had no children, he had a 401k he could cash in. He could take a leave of absence, a nice long vacation somewhere beautiful where they cooked delicious local specialties in quaint roadside bistros. And then at the end of three months or so, he could simply

Not  
Come  
Back.

He would need some other job, certainly; he needed money to live. But there were other jobs in the world that all paid something and did not involve daily contact with Patient J – with Joker, if you didn't work at Arkham, he wasn't Patient J, he was Joker, and most jobs did not involve ANY CONTACT WITH HIM AT ALL. That was saying something. That was worth quite a lot. Yes, he might have to accept a paycut and curtail a few little luxuries, but balancing that, he would not have to see Patient J-o-k-e-r again ever.

* * *

As much as Matt Hagen missed his old life, there were undeniable perks to being Clayface. Perhaps the most precious was impersonations like this, impersonations which PROVED Matt Hagen "the action star" really was a good actor.

Playing Batman to a first-tier rogue, this was going to be a highpoint of his Clayface-oeuvre.

Everyone assumed that action stars couldn't act. Matt would be the last one to call Steven Seagal or Jean-Claude Van Damme _actors_, but he did think there was more talent required to deliver ridiculously bad lines than the high-fallutin stuff. Anyone could look good doing Shakespeare – well, anyone that wasn't Keanu Reeves. But pulling off "covert agent turned survivalist must stop Chinese mafia from smuggling explosives across international borders," that took skill damnit, and not the kind they taught at the Actors' Studio. Not the kind that James Lipton got all fluttery over. It took real acting to deliver the lines those so-called _writers_ called _ dialogue_ as if it resembled natural human speech or expressed anything approaching a viable human thought! It took real acting to not notice that you sounded like a total moron, and it took even more talent a month later working the press junket, when you had to talk up that trainwreck of a picture as if it was something you were actually proud to be a part of.

It took real acting that absolutely nobody _recognized _as acting. They believed it was real. Wasn't that a better performance than the obvious stuff they gave Oscars for?

That was the kind of acting Matt Hagen excelled at, and that's what would make tonight's Bat-performance possible.

At the cat lair, Matt had assumed a reasonable Batman shape from memory, and Catwoman had offered a few suggestions to bring the look up to date. The insignia wasn't as round as in his day, it was a little more ovular and the yellow background had been changed to a deeper gold, Catwoman said. Also (according to the pussycat), it seemed Batman's jaw wasn't quite as square as Matt remembered. He was reluctant to take direction on that kind of detail, it reminded him of Cameron giving "little suggestions" for a line reading, which amounted to the exact delivery he wanted to hear, the precise tone, pace, emphasis, and facial expression. Matt always felt that intruded onto his artistic turf as an actor – but then Cameron didn't know what the hell he was talking about. His understanding of the plot, his view of the characters, and his instincts for any aspect of storytelling other than where to point the camera were all simplistic, 2-dimensional, and braindead. In this case, on the other hand, Matt didn't doubt that Catwoman had more opportunities than he did to see Batman up close and personal, and she would have done so much more recently. So he acquiesced and softened the jawline until she was happy.

She even broke into Kittlemeier's (gutsy broad) to get him an authentic cape and utility belt. Checking himself out in the mirror, Matt thought he looked perfect. But Catwoman insisted on spritzing him with some "leather scent." She said it added authenticity – although now that Matt had reached the greenhouse, he doubted anyone inside would be able to smell anything but flowers.

Clayface-Batman entered the greenhouse like he was expected. He didn't speak until spoken to and did his best to look adoringly at Poison Ivy, even though her back was turned and she had not yet deigned to notice him.

"You're early," the narcissist bitch said at last, without turning to look at him. "Could you not bear the separation a moment longer?"

Yes, standing there in the vestibule of the 28th Street greenhouse, looking tenderly at Goddess Greenleaf as if you were actually _happy_ to be in her presence again, that took **_skill_** – and not the kind they taught at that the Actors' Studio.

* * *

It was that time. Again. Bruce hated what he was doing, but he couldn't help himself. He bypassed the workstation, again, there was no new route to map out, again, nothing to update from the holographic citymaps into the Batmobile's navigation matrix, again.

"Hatch open," he ordered, again. He got in and closed the canopy, ag—

"Canopy lock," a hard female voice declared.

He turned incredulously to the passenger seat.

"Suspend Voiceprint: Batman," Catwoman continued calmly, "Ignition lock, Autosystems terminate."

"What are you doing?" he rasped.

"We have to talk," she said calmly.

"No, we don't," came the instant reply. "I have to—"

"Or at least I'll talk," she cut him off, "You listen. If I'm right, you don't have to say a word. If I'm wrong, you might want to mention it."

She paused and was met with only the clenched jaw and controlled glare that answered most of her more tantalizing rooftop propositions. So was that good news, typical Bruce at war with himself? Or was it shutting down to her? The cape and cowl version of the tired-tonight rollover and turning off the light?

"I think something happened to you the night we were supposed to meet at Gallery Athena," she began, easing herself into it. "I think you had an encounter with Poison Ivy and haven't been in control since."

She paused again, he'd twitched ever so subtly at the mention of Ivy's name but then he just stared straight ahead like the whole universe would split in two if he moved an inch.

"Just a reminder, silence equals yes," she said gently.

Clenched jaw, batglare, and no disagreement. She continued.

"I think you couldn't say anything or even hint at what was wrong, so you came up with 'Project Walapang' as a way to get the pertinent information into my hands without technically disobeying Ivy's orders. Is that right?"

He looked like he was about to say something - actually, he looked like he's about to say about 28 somethings ranging from "GET THE FUCK OUT!" to "Thank GOD!" but after a few moments of internal battle, he finally gave a curt half-hearted grunt. Given the silence-means-yes proposition, and his obvious internal thrashing, it was a completely ambiguous response. Like New Years Eve Charades at Eddie's, Selina thought absently – which did at least supply a useful formula of words.

"I'm sorry, I need something more than that," she said (swearing to herself on Nutmeg's catnip mouse that she would never tell him this was how one 'humored and handled' a semi-inebriated Edward Nigma).

Batman struggled for a moment.

"Project Wa…" he began, then stopped and stared at the tip of his glove as his hand rested on the steering wheel. "_That…_ was for you and you alone," he managed at last.

"On a roll, meow."

His lip twitched. He closed his eyes and shook his head, bewildered and in some deep recess of his psyche somewhat amused by the way her mind approached the problem.

"Okay, so I'm prying into places I'm not supposed to, finding numbers and looking up files with clues substituted for what's supposed to be in there. And even at that, the clues didn't directly implicate Ivy. I, I'm guessing that…" she stopped and winced, hating the implication of what was to follow, "I'm guessing that covered you if you can't lie to her. In case she asked a direction question, you'd want to be able to honestly say you haven't done anything to implicate her. _Plausible deniability_, as they say in political circles."

"I haven't. I would never—" he blurted instantly, and again he stopped, regarded the tip of his glove for a moment, and then looked at Catwoman. When he spoke again, his voice was deliberate and mechanical. "It involves no one but you."

"I thought so," Selina said quietly.

"I have to go now," he murmured just as quietly.

"No. But we'll be done soon. There's still the why. Harley Quinn Kryptonite and Clayface. Harley and Matt Hagen had become a couple."

"They had?" Batman interrupted sharply. It was unlike the previous outburst and Selina smiled to herself. For the first time in days she heard a hint of the man she knew – _PsychoBat hadn't known something_. And Psychobat hated not being the first to know. Much as Selina was delighted to have uncovered something on her own, she was more encouraged by this spark of real Battitude.

"Guess you didn't know that?" she grinned, figuring a healthy dose of teasing felinity might help him along. "He was 'The Monarch of Menace,' you really didn't know?"

Batman grunted.

"Score an extra point for kitty," Catwoman purred. "But if you didn't know about Harley and Hagen, what was the Harley Quinn Kryptonite supposed to mean?"

"It was found in Hawaii," Batman said absently. "I thought it was obvious. You were here in the cave that day. You knew… Gotham… from Hawaii… I have to go now."

"We'll be done soon," Selina repeated. "And if you didn't know before, you know now. That's 'the why behind the why,' from your point of view. Harley and Clayface were an item, and Ivy is a jealous, resentful, possessive bitch. I remind you that silence equals agreement."

His head whipped around at 'resentful, possessive bitch' and he glared at her intently, but after the rest of her statement, he said nothing.

"You can say that again," Catwoman smirked. "Which brings us to why she went after you and, I think, why you've been able to resist her as far as you have. I made a similar mistake this morning. I told Alfred not to worry about being tactful. Didn't work, I may as well ask Whiskers not to play with yarn. It's against his nature and he won't do it… Ivy asked you to kill."

"She wants Hagen dead, and she guessed that if anyone knows how to do it, you would."

"You've been holding out all this time."

"I have to go now."

"Waiting for me to figure it out."

"I have to go."

"Project Walapang."

"SELINA," he shouted, then took several deep breaths, though he hadn't appeared to exert himself in any way, his heart had been pounding and he was visibly winded. "I have…to go…now," he graveled in a hard, forceful, bat-voice.

"You know I can't let you do that," Catwoman said grimly.

"You know you can't stop me," came the unexpectedly menacing reply.

* * *

…to be continued…


	9. You Know You Can't Stop Me

_Chapter 9: You know you can't stop me_

* * *

"I _can_ stop you, Stud," Catwoman said evenly. "Hell, I already have. The canopy is locked, the engine won't start, and your voiceprint is switched off until I give the override."

"_DO IT!_" he shouted savagely.

"Put the PsychoBat back in the box, Bruce. That doesn't work on me; it never has and it never will."

"Catwoman," he hissed with studied control. "I have to go **_now_**. Release my voiceprint, and _get_ _out_ of this car."

"Look Stud, here's the situation: 1. If you won't kill Clayface for her, there's certainly a limit to what you'll do to me."

He stared menacingly at her for a moment. "Do you want to test that theory?" he growled.

"As a matter of fact, no. Which brings us to 2. There is no martial art in existence suited to the driver's seat of this car. You don't have room to do what you're best at, matter of fact you don't have room to do much of anything and neither do I. So you can just drop the caped badass routine. Trying to threaten me or intimidate me will not get you out of this, although it may piss me off and that's definitely not going to get you to speeding off to see Queen Chlorophyll any faster. "

"Well?" he asked darkly.

"Well," she answered with a coy smile. "I think…"

She leaned forward and toyed with the edge of his cape.

"…A part of you, the part that matters, the part that's really _you_…"

She progressed to the bat emblem on his chest and traced the oval with a clawtip.

"…really wants to help me get you out of this…"

She looked up at him sweetly, and was met with the clenched jaw and controlled glare that always answered emblem-play.

"…You just need a reason to cooperate…" she went on, tracing the lower scallop of the batwing.

"And here it is," she said seductively, licking her lips as she eyed the emblem, as if she was considering kissing it. "I'll release control of the car and you can be on your way to the greenhouse… just as soon as you tell me how to activate the protocol you must have already come up with for something like this."

He sat in silence for almost a full minute, tension pouring off him in hot, spiky waves.

"There isn't any," he said finally. "Release the car."

"No," Catwoman said simply.

"Fine," he muttered. He reached up to a hidden latch at the back of the canopy and yanked a manual release.

Catwoman cursed, seeing all her careful plans crumple to nothing as he forced the canopy open and climbed out. The foremost thought in her mind as she followed him out of the car: a physical confrontation was back on the table, in fact, it was a very real possibility. Her second thought never quite formed, it was pushed to the side as she realized he wasn't heading for another Batmobile as she might have expected. He was heading into the main cavern of the Batcave… he was heading for Workstation 1.

By the time she reached the main chamber, a layout map of the entire Batcave had popped onto the huge viewscreen looming over the cavern. By default, that screen reflected whatever was happening on Workstation 1's monitor. She could see Batman was selecting the Hangar Bay on the screen to remotely power up the Batwing – meaning the clock was ticking on his departure, meaning he intended to make up for lost time, and meaning (that half-formed thought from before now emerged with excruciating clarity) _this could get very, very ugly very, very fast._

But then—

There was something strange about that layout.

Selina had been poring over blueprints of the house and cave for days. They were fresh in her mind: the schematics, blueprints and floorplans, all inter-linked, transposable and familiar, but this… was different. What was diff—**_There!_** Unlike _every_ blueprint or schematic she'd looked at, this one layout had one feature not shown on any other: the hologram alcove. That little niche where his most private safe was hidden behind the most diabolically clever "fake bookcase" anyone ever conceived. It wasn't on any of the blueprints, any of them. It hadn't been on THIS rendering either when she saw it before, Selina was sure of it. She'd seen this screen a dozen times in the past week and that alcove had not been there. But now, there it was, plain as day. And not only was it there…

Not only was it there, but there was a tiny bat symbol just over the alcove area.

"What is that?" she asked impatiently.

"What's what?"

"_THAT!_" she pointed.

Either he couldn't tell because the viewscreen was 6 feet wide, or he was being conveniently and infuriatingly _DENSE_. She marched furiously to the workstation, nudged him away from the controls, and selected the little bat icon over the alcove.

The cave erupted into a frenzy of flashing strobes flickering at god-only-knew-how-many cycles-per-second from every monitor and display in the cave. The effect was beyond disorienting, and despite clenching her eyes as tightly as she could, the flickering light penetrated her eyelids and Selina felt a wave of hot nausea. If she actually blacked out, it was only for a second because… because yes, she was still standing, shakily, but she was still on her feet. She felt winded, the skin of her arms under the catsuit felt like it was crackling with electricity, she had "pins and needles" in her fingertips, and her head throbbed.

"Are you alright?" came a gentler voice than she'd heard in many days.

She turned. Batman was sitting in the console chair, staring blankly at the screen as it flashed a little more then stopped.

"What the hell was that?" she managed weakly.

"A severe but effective way to nullify post-hypnotic instruction. It's not…" he stopped, not as before because he was struggling internally, but because he was panting from the aftereffects of the strobe. "…not enduring or stable. Get to the medlab. Get the anti-tox… Get me into bed. Watch me tonight. The longer I can keep away from her… the easier it will get…"

Catwoman nodded and, from the whip-holster in her boot, she produced a pen-shaped injector with a bat emblem on the side.

"Way ahead of you on the anti-tox," she said, "I came prepared. But your file said it takes weeks to have an effect."

She considered the possibility that the whole lightshow and "go to the medlab" routine was a ruse: send her off, if only a short distance, so he could get to the Batwing without interference. So she was relieved to see him removing his glove and offering his bare arm without any fuss.

"It does take two weeks minimum on its own," he murmured. "There are other ways to speed the detoxification. Maybe in the morning I can try to…"

He sighed, seeming relieved more than anything after she injected him, resting his head back on the edge of the chair, closing his eyes, and then graveling the afterthought, "Took you long enough."

* * *

Matt had performed countless love scenes in his day, one or two with bitchy women he didn't like. He had no problem stepping forward and boldly declaring that indeed, he could not stay away from Poison Ivy, his queen and goddess, for one minute more than necessary.

He was playing a game with himself, the kind many actors play to make a complicated performance ring true. If he really was enthralled with Poison Ivy, Matt reasoned, then his objective in the scene, his "motivation," would be to get close to her. As such, he would devise his own reason to get close to her so that the actor, Matthew Hagen, and the role he was playing, Greened Batman, would share a common goal. Matt decided that he wanted to get close enough to Pammy to look into her eyes. He was making a bet with himself about what he would see there.

It took a few minutes. She asked if no one was suspicious… He appeared confused by that, and she had to clarify: Was no one suspicious because he came early? It was barely dark. Was no one mistrustful because he'd left wherever he was and quit whatever he was doing earlier than usual? Clay-Batman said no, there was no one to notice such things tonight, and he repeated the part about longing to see her again and not being able to restrain himself a moment longer.

With that, he had closed the distance and was finally able to see her eyes clearly. He saw exactly what he expected. Matt had played an awful lot of love scenes in his day, one or two, yes, with bitches he didn't like… And one or two with _needy delusional psychos_, which was another breed entirely.

Some of those women, you could see it when you looked in their eyes: they really believed you loved them –not the character they played, _them_. They would never admit it, they were sane enough to know it was nuts. But they were so desperate for attention, they'd spend the whole scene pretending in their minds that it was real. They'd usually blow a few takes to make you do it over again. That's when you saw it, that look. Because you were spewing some love scene drivel, they could pretend and for a few seconds forget how pathetically empty they were.

Matt couldn't say for sure what it was, but _something_ in Ivy's manner since he arrived at the greenhouse struck that chord. All sugared up because someone was looking at her adoringly. He was drugged, for Spielberg's sake, at least his character was drugged. He didn't love her any more than he loved Sharon Stone, Gweneth Paltrow, or Lucy Liu in their respective joint-appearances on the AFI countdown of hottest movie kisses. Ivy knew that. She knew Batman didn't love her, yet she was absolutely _WALLOWING_ in the Lance Starfire/Princess Olympia doe eyes he was giving her. So he made a bet with himself that if he got close enough to see into _her_ eyes…

"Come, You must be pleased to be able to bask once more in the green."

…Yep, there it was. The look. Needy. Empty. Finally getting a taste of the "love" it craved. Like most audiences, Ivy would take his performance to mean what she wanted it to mean. She saw the gleam in ClayBat's eyes as he looked into hers and she took it to be infatuated delight in her proximity, not satisfaction with his own cleverness in finally figuring her out. Poison Ivy. All that ego… that loud, obnoxious, overblown narcissism – the great Gotham goddess – what else could all that bluster be hiding but a wide, deep, hollow…

"None initiated into the enchanted mysteries of the Green can resist the beauty of Nature's chosen vessel."

Sensing this was his cue, he murmured something complimentary about the beauties of nature (There were some nice roses in the corner), and noted to himself that the needy-psycho theory would certainly explain why she was such a possessive nutcase where Harley was concerned.

* * *

It was a long night. Batman was cooperative as far as the costume vault. Alfred had not yet brought his kimono or removed the clothes he'd worn that day as Bruce Wayne. Selina saw no reason for him to change, he could just wear the costume up to bed and she'd bring it down later. But he insisted. Ivy had enthralled _Batman_, he said, and in his mind Bruce and Batman were sufficiently distinct that he was better able to resist her out of costume.

It made little sense to Selina, but anything that helped, she was all in favor, "meow."

He smiled at the meow, and that did look like progre… He smiled. It was more than progress it was… He'd smiled. At her. It was the first time in days he'd shown anything other than annoyance or indifference. Now he'd smiled at a meow. And for a few fleeting minutes, Selina felt everything really might turn out okay.

The trouble began when she took him up to the manor. Alfred was surprised to see them. Master Bruce was never home that early and Miss Selina, only occasionally. Also, Miss Selina was still in costume while Master Bruce was not. All in all, it was quite an atypical development, and Alfred was understandably curious –and concerned.

Bruce started to explain – but he couldn't get very far.

"Poison Ivy," Selina said, supplying the name he hadn't been able to speak.

"Yes, her," Bruce said grimly. "I've had some… trouble… difficulty… nothing really, a small eh, setback, not even…"

"We've had some trouble," Selina broke in crisply. "Like the time you were telling me about this morning, with the Foundation. I need to get him to bed."

He didn't fight going up to the bedroom. He did stare transfixed at the vase of lilacs next to the bed. Selina promptly removed it and set it outside the door. Bruce got undressed and got into bed without argument, but he had more and more trouble discussing anything related to Ivy or the greenhouse.

After a few minutes, Alfred came in with a sedative. There was an argument about that, but Selina stayed out of it. She could see it was a quarrel they'd had many times before, and she had a hunch that Alfred always won. Tonight was no different and soon Bruce was asleep, breathing heavily, and going nowhere.

Selina cried.

Whiskers hopped up on the bed and sniffed Bruce's elbow. Alfred brought warm milk. Selina drank it, she cried again, Nutmeg hopped up and licked Whiskers's nose, Selina held Bruce's hand, and eventually she fell asleep.

* * *

Well…

Matt Hagen didn't like Batman and probably never would.

But now that he was seeing first hand what had been going on in the greenhouse, he was gladder than ever that he'd come. It was no longer about helping Catwoman. It was simply that NO MAN _EVER_ should have to endure this. No man should have to endure a "goddess" thinking he's in love with her. The psycho-actresses _PALED_ in comparison to this.

She'd drugged him, what, four different ways by now? Matt could only assume there were pheromones in the air, that's one. He couldn't smell them of course, but Ivy certainly acted like her very presence was intoxicating. Then she'd slapped a leaf onto his cheek like a nicotine patch, that's two; stuck a thorn in his glove, three; and now she'd kissed him. He got no more out of the kiss than he did the patch or the thorn, but still, that was definitely three and possibly four different ways she'd tried to drug him. That's not love. It's not even lust. It's just fucked.

Then there was the chit-chat in between. Talk about fucked.

She wanted Batman to kill "the Walking Dung Heap" i.e. _ him_. That's what Catwoman had guessed, and that turned out to be the case – sorta. The word "kill" was so simple, detached, almost impersonal. It didn't really cover what Poison Ivy wanted to do to Clayface. What Ivy wanted wasn't so much to kill him as to obliterate/exterminate/eradicate/burn him from existence, to devour him from within with a sort of fiery-acid-venom-made-of pure-hatred —in green. Ideally the acid venom fire of pure hatred should be green —or at least in some way connected to flowers. If that wasn't possible, Ivy would accept it (grudgingly), but if Batman _really loved her,_ he would find a way to work flowers into Matt Hagen's excruciatingly painful demise.

Then came the goddess bit. First there was Gaia. Pantheon: Olympian. Sphere of Influence: Fertility and Protection. Suitable offerings: Fruits and Grain. Preferred colors: Green (No kidding, Pammy! Never would have guessed that, never!) Gaia is Mother Earth and grandmother of the Olympians. She was born from Chaos and gave birth to Pontus and Uranus _without outside help. _But then she bore the Titans with Uranus as their father (and we all know how that turned out, useless men). She also gave birth to the Cyclopes, the Hecatonchires, the Gigantes and the Furies, all conceived _after_ Uranus had been castrated (at Gaia's request) and his blood fell to earth from the open wound (so there). She is seen as the essence of primordial life and of the Earth itself…

* * *

The first conscious thought Bruce had was that he hadn't dreamt of flowers… He hadn't dreamt of the alley either… He hadn't dreamt at all… must've been drugged… He raised a heavy hand to his bleary eyes and **_ STARTED_**awake as he realized he was unmasked. His heart pounded for endless seconds until his groggy senses caught up and he realized he was in his own bed. He groaned and let the hand flop back on the bed as the memories flooded back from the night before.

He heard Selina's voice in the hallway… but not Alfred's. She must be on the phone. He couldn't quite make out her tone, if it was anxious, excited, or irate. He moaned again, impatient with his sluggish senses and foggy mind's inability to process data or draw conclusions.

Suddenly Selina was standing over him.

"You're awake." _Soft words._ "I wanted to be here when you woke up." _Not like Ivy's, pushing him, always pushing him to kill the Walking Dung Heap that wasn't fit to live._ "How are you feeling?" _ Soft words. Then soft lips._

He groaned again.

"I'm getting to it. I just have to formulate the appropriate plan."

"Bruce?"

No.

No, that was _Selina_. Ivy hadn't called him Bruce. Ivy didn't call him Bruce. Ivy didn't ask how he was feeling. Ivy only asked how to kill the Walking Dung Heap.

"Bruce, I'm going to give you another dose of anti-tox."

No.

Not another shot. How long was he going to be able to take this? How long could he hold on before he told her how to do it? Walking Dung Heap wasn't fit to live anyway, only fit to be fertilizer for the beautiful flowers. How long was it going to take before Catwoman put it together? Prick of a thorn. How long could he hold on?

"I'm getting to it," he murmured again. "I just have to formulate the appropriate…"

"Shh, it's okay." That was new. Not pressing him after a thorn. Not pressing him after a kiss. Soft words, soft lips, soft fingers in his hair. Bruce closed his eyes and went back to sleep.

* * *

Then of course there was Nerthus, Pantheon: Norse. Element: Earth. Sphere of Influence: Fertility and Prosperity. Preferred colors: Green. (Again with the green. Will wonders never cease?) Nerthus is the Earth Goddess who was said to have traveled through Denmark in a wagon, from which she blessed the land with fertility. She is the Earth Mother that rules over Midgard, associated with witchcraft, wealth and purification.

Matt Hagen didn't like Batman before coming to the greenhouse, but he was beginning to reconsider. It had become increasingly clear that Batman had been coming here for several nights and that he'd somehow resisted Ivy's demands to tell her anything he knew about how Clayface might be killed. _And_ he'd evidently listened to several nights of this, this lecture series on Goddesses of Growing Things.

Matt could only assume it was easier to take if you were greened, but nevertheless.

"So you see, mankind has always been indebted to those godly women touched by the blessed life force of Mother Earth, without whose power and munificence no blossom, sheaf, or blade of grass could grow. Now you must see, surely, how unnatural it is to resist this simple request. Tell me, Batman, would dehydrating the Walking Dung Heap be possible? Dry air and extreme cold, it works on beef jerky, why couldn't it work on clay?"

Matt did his best imitation of a stoic crimefighter reluctantly but nobly standing mute in answer to this bizarre idea. He briefly considered that it might be playing Batman as a role that was making him more sympathetic to the crimefighter he'd always considered a blustering nuisance.

Did she say DEHYDRATE HIM LIKE _JERKY_?

No, it wasn't playing Batman that was turning him around on the crimefighter. It was Ivy. Anyone who put up with this for more than 20 minutes without killing her was beyond a hero. Greened or not, he was a hero. He deserved a star on Hollywood Boulevard. He deserved an Oscar, a private bungalow at Metro, concurrent cover stories in Variety, Time and People, and a baked lobster roll at Koi on the studio's tab.

* * *

When Bruce woke again, he realized immediately that he'd slept for more than 24 hours. It was still light outside, but his body felt too stiff and too hungry for it to be only a few hours. He also realized he was not alone in the bed. Selina was lying beside him, propped on her elbow, reading a book.

"You haven't been here all this time?" he said, his dry throat unintentionally producing a deep bat-gravel.

"Hi there," she purred, setting the book aside. "I come and go."

He sat up and looked into her eyes.

"Selina, how many hours of the last 24 did you spend in this room?"

"Well," she blushed and looked away, then turned back and blurted defensively "A lot, okay. I wanted to be sure you were all right."

He reached out, pulled her face gently towards his, and kissed her tenderly.

"Thank you," he said emphatically. "For everything."

"You're welcome, but those aren't the words I'm waiting to hear."

"Poison Ivy is a repugnant criminal and a dangerous sociopath, and tonight I'm taking her down hard, fast and painful."

"I would have settled for 'a world-class bitch,'" Selina smiled. "But don't you think tonight is rushing things?"

"There's a way to speed up the detoxification. There's a metal sample down in the chem lab, shaped like a bar of soap. Special alloy. I haven't tested it. But Ivy's pheromones are protein-based; under running water the amino acids will bind to the alloy breaking the molecular bonds holding them to the skin. If I spend the day working up a sweat in the sauna then showering with the bar, sauna-shower-sauna-shower, my system should be completely clear by tonight. I've already had what, four shots of anti-tox?"

"Six."

"_Six?!_ Two a day, first shot was in the Batcave, is it… Selina, is it _Tuesday_?"

She nodded.

He sighed and shook his head.

"It's no good. A two-night absence, _maybe_ I could convince her I'd been unable to get away but was still in her thrall. But three, she'd never buy that."

"You haven't missed a single appearance as far as Ivy is concerned," Selina said smugly. "She's had a bat-toy to play with every night since I confronted you in the cave."

Bruce's eyes widened.

"What did you do?" he asked, flashing through horror scenarios of feline-logic-meets-bat-mantle. "Not Jean Paul!"

She stared. She glared. She did her best to remember that she loved this man, had remained at his bedside for the better part of 56 hours, and that allowances should be made for the copious amounts of chemicals coursing through his system for the past week. Nevertheless…

"Jean Paul Valley, as in no pheromones at all, you think I'd send _him_ to _Ivy_? As what some kind of zero-sum experiment, see if he could suck the sex appeal right out of her?"

"Well it couldn't be Dick, Ivy would see through that in a minute, and J'onn—"

"That's your rolodex not mine. And there was already a shapeshifter on the table. I got Matt to do it."

"Clayface? You got—"

"Hey, no love lost between him and Ivy,_ in case that's somehow escaped you,_ Jackass. And best of all, her pheromones can't touch him."

"He'll have _killed_ her by now."

"No he hasn't, he calls every morning after he leaves the greenhouse. He's all kinds of pissed, and he has some gory plans for a certain rosebush, but he's perfectly willing to wait for my go-ahead. I'm like his director."

Bruce swallowed, moistening a painfully parched throat.

"He calls me 'C.W.'" Selina added.

Bruce swallowed again, rubbed his temples, and scowled. Through sheer force of will, he prodded himself into a "Batman" frame of mind sufficient to produce what others perceived as a density shift. When he spoke again, his deep gravel was not from the dry throat but from pure, disapproving Battitude.

"You sent Clayface. To Ivy. As me."

"You think Ivy's the only one who can charm a little help out of a man with an undeniably useful skill?" she smiled, indifferent as always to disapproving Battitude.

"It's a potentially lethal superpower," he corrected. "You can't control him, when he decides to go on a mad rampage and kill her—"

"Okay first, let's scroll back to 'thank you for everything,' because that's the only thing keeping you unscratched right now. Second, I don't think MattHHHHhhhhhhlll…. is any crazier than I am. He seemed perfectly rational when I talked to him, not especially prone to 'mad rampages.' He certainly understands that he has a vested interest in the situation. Ivy wants to kill him and I gave him a heads up, Yay Kitty. He has every reason to help me. And third…"

She trailed off and sighed.

"Yes?" Bruce prompted wearily.

"He seems like a really decent guy. Bruce, he had everything. Life dealt him some absolutely brutal blows. Now he's got a lot of problems trusting people. Sound at all familiar?"

"I hope you're not suggesting—"

"Look, you're right. I can't 'control' him, that's Pammy's shtick. It's not my style, even if I had the Lemon Pledge bodychemistry. I'm not controlling him, I'm _trusting_ him and maybe… maybe then he'll trust me. I think he needs to trust somebody. He's so alone it's killing him, worse than anything you and Ivy cooked up."

"Pity the poor rogue," Bruce sneered. "Do you have any idea how many times I've nearly suffocated in all that—"

"Special Foundation Initiative S4, Humanitarian," Selina said simply.

Bruce glared.

"You're going to hate this next part," she went on.

"Yes, I suspect I am," he agreed.

"I want you to let me and Matt handle Ivy tonight, and after—"

"No."

"—and afterwards—"

"_No_."

"—_Afterwards_, I want to bring him back here to meet you."

Bruce bristled, his eyes closing. "Not a chance," he growled. "First off, I've spent the last week in Ivy's thrall. I've spent the last three days in a rapid detox to try and get her influence out of my system and all the while _Clayface_ has been impersonating _me_ in front of Ivy, without my knowledge or approval. It couldn't be helped, considering my condition, I understand that. But to think that I'm just going to stand on the sidelines while my _girlfriend_ and her super-powered buddy are exacting revenge…"

He paused briefly, letting the comment hang in the air as he turned to look at her again. She opened her mouth to speak, but he interjected before she could even start.

"And now, after all of this, as I'm ready to try to get Batman back on track after being out of action for a week, you want to bring Clayface - a high powered rogue and one of Batman's deadliest enemies - back to the _cave_ to meet with me for some kind of…"

"No, Bruce," Selina interrupted, "not the cave, I didn't mean the cave. I meant bring him _here_, to the house. It's not Batman that Matt needs to meet with, it's Bruce Wayne. It's about finding legitimate research for his condition and the financing to cover that research."

Bruce paused again. "Selina… No."

"Special Foundation Initiative S4, Humanitarian. Bruce, why does it exist if not for this? If he cooperates, then it wouldn't be guesswork, right? They could find the right hydrogen level or whatever it was to make him—"

"Selina, your heart is in the right place but—"

"Look, you owe me!" she blurted. "For the 'tired tonight' and rolling over alone, you owe me huge. He went to _Luthor_, Bruce. I told him not all rich men are like that. I am bringing him back here tonight to meet you. You can either prove me right, or prove me wrong."

Bruce sighed and shook his head.

"Not here. Bring him to the penthouse."

Selina smirked.

"Fewer nooks and crannies to check after he's left?" she guessed.

"Newer sprinkler system," he grunted.

* * *

…to be concluded…


	10. Showdown in FloMa

_Chapter 10: Showdown in FloMa_

* * *

The wholesale flower market, or FloMa as it's come to be known in trendy GothamSpeak, has been a beloved pocket of pure Gotham quirkiness since it moved from the ferry landing in the 1890s and reconvened on Sixth Avenue between 26th and 28th Streets. Every weekday, more than two hundred growers brought fragrant wares from their farms and greenhouses, some coming from as far as eighty miles outside the city. They brought potted plants to the stalls in the old Giordano Market Building. They brought cut flowers to the original Exchange on Conway and its younger, more affluent rival in the Novick-Mitchell Building. But FloMa's heyday was over. Ordinary Gothamites didn't buy flowers anymore, even at Easter. The buyers now were all "in trade," hotels, restaurants, florists and decorators. As the private customers disappeared, the markets became all but invisible. Developers bought the building that housed the original Exchange and forced it to move to a loft in Novick-Mitchell just one floor above its rival; the open air stalls all but vanished; the auxiliary flea market moved to Hell's Kitchen. But for those who knew it was there, FloMa still stretched down Sixth Avenue from 26th to 28th, dotted with hidden pockets of green.

One such pocket was a garden supply store behind the 28th Street Greenhouse, the roof of which Batman noted in his final log entry as a prime observation point and a useful staging area "for either covert penetration of the greenhouse or full-out assault." Catwoman found the spot easily enough and felt a pang as she looked down on the telltale bites of a bat-grapnel in the ceiling grate, and beyond that into Ivy's lair in the greenhouse itself. It _ was_ a perfect vantage point, just as advertised. Bruce was_ so good_ at what he did. Catwoman, on the other hand, gagged on the very thought of "crimefighting" and had developed few skills related to it. She could adapt many of the skills she did have, but when it came to coordinating a joint assault on a criminal lair, she had no clue how to proceed. So when Clayface wanted to begin on his own, she agreed. As he said, he'd earned it.

She had called an hour before nightfall, just as always. She could tell by the speed of the pickup that he'd been waiting and not very patiently. Once Matt learned that tonight was finally the night and he could drop the bat-charade whenever he was ready, he'd said _"Thank god, C.W. I swear if I had to get through one more round of 'Blodeuwedd is the Celtic goddess of Earth in bloom' without reacting, it was gonna be a 'Kill Bill meets the Texas Chainsaw Massacre' situation."_ Selina had laughed, and that brought on a bat-scowl seldom seen outside of Hell Month. Bruce could only hear her side of the conversation, of course. He heard her say tonight was the night, he heard garbled squawking from the phone, and he saw a naughty grin flash behind her eyes, dance across her lips, and then erupt into that wickedly merry laugh.

"This has disaster written all over it," he said scornfully.

Selina dismissed his concern. She'd managed this far without Bat-help after all. But now, now that she'd reached this spot, hand-picked by the master crimefighter as the perfect entry point, she was having doubts. He was the expert, the professional, and he thought she was being foolishly naïve in partnering with Clayface. What if he was right?

* * *

Jean Paul's speakers chirped and a small private message window appeared beneath his full house.

Hey buddy, just noticed you've been playing a lot for the past few days. You practicing for a tournament or you blowing off steam?

Jean Paul doubled his bet and closed the window without answering. He'd had a bad day, yes. Maybe not life-changingly bad, but bad. First that searing look at what his life might have been sans Azrael, then that kick in the teeth from Catwoman, then the inevitable result of a bad Cat-encounter (as if there was any other kind) Azrael starts tweaking the armor. He'd had to get up early and take those stupid sketches for "spiky boots" to Kittlemeier, who said Jean Paul could pick them up day after tomorrow. Why so soon? Because Kittlemeier knew just how to produce this effect; he'd put raised studs like that on a gold belt for Catwoman way back when. That was one nice belt, superior workmanship, one of his best efforts. Pity she didn't stick with it but the rest of the outfit was just for this one job and… Jean Paul heard no more, because Azrael began this "Meditation" on the Most Glorious St. Dumas that made it hard to concentrate, seeing as it resembled sticking his fingers in his ears and humming real loud more than meditating. In Jean Paul's book, that was a bad day. He'd had a few days to get over it, sure, and he had spent them playing internet poker, so what? He was up 11,000; so what?

That seemed the final kick in the teeth actually. "Lucky at cards" and all that.

Nicely played, buddy, the private messenge box returned.

_Thanks_, Jean Paul typed.

Didn't mean to wreck your concentration before. You a pro? Practicing for a tournament?

_No, just blowing off steam,_ Jean Paul admitted.

And he was up 11,000 in 3 days. Lucky at cards and unlucky in love…

Probably.

There was Helena. Maybe. He wasn't sure what was going on there. He was such a mess with women, he really wasn't sure. "Friends with benefits" did they call it? A lot of guys would call that a dream come true, right? The ultimate in low maintenance companionship… _If_ that's what it was. Without knowing for sure, it was just another chance to humiliate himself with a woman. Plus, if that is all they were, it was subject to her (well technically either of them, but realistically just her) finding someone she felt serious about. And that would be all kinds of awkward.

He wished there was someone he could talk to guy-to-guy, but his only real confidant was Azrael. Grayson was out of the question. Tim Drake was way too young – plus word on the OraCom was that he couldn't beat Batgirl at a video game, so what could he know. Neither Alfred nor Bruce seemed like "guy talk" guys, and even if they were, they were both out at Wayne Manor and that meant running the Cat gauntlet and that was not going to happen any time soon!

Jean Paul sighed. He had trip sevens, the fourth was still out there, the four of a kind was possible, he was up 11,000 – and he was utterly miserable.

* * *

Catwoman already had her whip lashed to the ceiling grate for one of those loud and violent glass-shattering entrances, but as her doubts grew, she decided to lower herself in quietly. There were two advantages. First, by sneaking in, she could see and hear more of what was actually happening inside the lair. The observation point on the garden shop roof revealed the kind of information Batman would want to know: he could see light (someone is home), he could see movement (two figures, one standing near the door, eight creepervines overhead, one giant flytrap). But it didn't reveal much about what was actually going on – at least it didn't to her. There was no telling what Batman might deduce from the way the shorter figure was moving or the taller one's proximity to the flytrap. Catwoman decided she needed to see more. The second advantage of this approach was stealth itself. All her natural confidence returned as soon as she abandoned the posture of a "crimefighter" and returned to what she did best. She removed the ventilation panel over the greenhouse with greater care than she did Tiffany's, and she crept through the beds of infant daffodils more silently than she navigated the museum's detection net. As she approached the doorway to the lair proper, she inhaled for a silent beat of five, then exhaled just as slowly, priming her body so that no gasp or sound would escape her when she saw whatever she was about to see. Breathlessly, she looked in…

Ivy was encased in what could best be described as a slime hammock. A stylized Joker sat next to her on what could best be described as a throne of potpourri. He pointed excitedly at a portable DVD player on the table and seemed to be commenting at length on the movie it was showing. Catwoman crept closer, straining to hear.

"Few more explosions yet, Pammy, boys will be boys you know, ha-HA-haha, then we'll get to the part I know you're waiting for, the _ LUV_-scene."

There was a duet of muffled female expression in response: Ivy's wail was muted by a thin veil of slime across her mouth and Catwoman's snarf was muffled in her own glove as she realized "Joker" was hosting a Matt Hagen movie marathon. On the screen, the door of an Asian nightclub exploded into a fireball, and a strappingly macho Hagen strode out of the fiery chaos to pose dramatically with an M-16 in one hand and a beautiful katana in the other.

"That's what they call a hero shot," Clay-Joker observed – then he saw that Ivy had her eyes clenched tight. "Ah ah ah," he chided. "Remember, every time a goddess closes her eyes, a plant loses its wings."

He reached out until his Joker-arm stretched to a grotesquely unnatural length, plucked a rose off a bush in the corner and retracted the arm swiftly. He delivered a supremely menacing Joker-grin, then popped the rosehead into his mouth and swallowed it whole. Ivy struggled with renewed vigor, straining against her bonds and shrieking into the cocoon around her mouth, but she quickly calmed back down as she realized (yet again) the futility of her struggle.

"Here it comes, here it comes," Clay-Joker said suddenly. He pointed eagerly at the screen where Hagen's character was sneaking through a hotel suite. "I know you'll like this part."

On the tiny screen, Hagen's character had made his way to the bathroom and watched as a shapely brunette stepped out of the tub and wrapped herself in a towel. He stepped up boldly, grabbed her and kissed her passionately. She slapped him, and he said he couldn't help himself, he was overcome by her beauty.

Clay-Joker morphed quickly into Clay-Batman and regarded Ivy with amused irony.

"I couldn't help myself," he said reproducing both the line and the precise delivery from the love scene in Batman's dry gravel. "No man could. You're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen." Then he morphed back into Joker and laughed his head off.

* * *

Well… kwak… it was one worry disposed of and a new one cropping up to take its place.

Judge Bungaree had disposed of Oswald's arrest and vanished all traces of the paperwork, just as he would have for any of Oswald's operatives. The man, like most corrupt officials who had settled into their corruption, lacked the imagination to recognize a real opportunity when it dropped into his nest. He saw only another 10G from the Iceberg, just like any other. It didn't even occur to the small, stupid man that Cobblepot being personally involved might be worth more. Forget the power it gave him over Oswald in the greater scheme of things, the idiot slug didn't even think to squeeze him for another 5 grand. A lucky break for Oswald, but then fortune favored the elite, which he certainly was-kwak.

But if Bungaree was too stupid to see the opportunity, Raven was not. Raven had been Oswald's go-between, and she had answered all of his questions after the fact about the judge's words and behavior. She answered in such a way that she obviously grasped what he was getting at. She knew what Oswald was really asking – and why. She understood that Oswald was worried about Bungaree, that Bungaree had power over him because of this arrest cleanup (or he would have if he had been bright enough to realize it). And in knowing that, Raven could very well conclude that she had power too.

Oswald was not prepared to eliminate Raven. She was a lovely bird and she knew how to handle the Iceberg clientele. Besides which, at one time Jonathan Crane was interested in her. All in all, that is not a lady you want to see in a freak accident with an Early Bird Delivery van.

But Oswald did want to get rid of her, not permanently, just until the dust settled. A vacation perhaps. A paid vacation and a small bonus. Nothing too lavish, nothing she might perceive a payoff. Just a small gesture, a 'thanks for all your help-kwakwak,' 'something to make your getaway a little more pleasurable-kwak.' Yes that would do very nicely. A three-kwak bonus. Now where to send her, and for how long?

* * *

While Catwoman had every intention of bursting onto the scene herself by now, ripping Ivan to shreds and stuffing each and every piece of shredded flytrap up Ivy's nose, she refrained. Clayface's revenge was just too damned poetic to interrupt.

A half hour earlier, sensing that a saturation point had been reached on his movies, Matt remembered he was dealing with a colleague. No, no, he didn't mean a fellow Batman rogue, he meant another film star! Wasn't Pammy herself featured in a famous actionfest blockbuster? It would be too selfish of him to spend all this time screening _his_ movies and not give equal time to _her_ record-breaking appearance in _Catfight at the Iceberg_. Granted, there wasn't much dialogue after Roxy called her a three-dollar whore, but hey, all those thousands and thousands of strapping young men who downloaded this video didn't do it for the snappy dialogue, now did they? Check it out, Pammy, look at that slow motion jiggle when the fireball knocks you back and the leaves go flying off that bustier. Makes you proud to be an American, don't it? Sweet Spielberg, that's what they mean when they say everybody loves a goddess! A'Course, Roxy does have a better figure for the camera; that's only to be expected, she was a stuntwoman after all. Camera adds ten pounds and if you don't train for it, well, a few of those angles, Ivy looked a little chunky – like this part where Roxy is pulling her hair – and there when Roxy has Ivy's arm twisted behind her back – and yeah, see right there, where Roxy is swinging her into the jukebox… chunky.

Not surprisingly, the muted howls and outraged thrashing in the slime hammock intensified, but before it got _really_ good, Catwoman was forced to break off her surveillance. Most thieves were used to hours of quiet waiting, often in cramped hidden locations. Sometimes it was easier to sneak into a gallery or museum during the day when it was open to the public, hide yourself away and wait until dark. More often it was necessary once the burglary was underway, if you'd emptied out the night vault and only then realized the new guard was a Bat-pest in disguise. So you hid, but you had to keep your body primed, ready to fight or run on a moment's notice. There were a number of ways to do it, tensing and releasing isolated muscle groups one at a time. Selina had done this unconsciously while her attention was focused on Clayface, but now she had to stretch more overtly, arching her back and stretching her arms behind her— until she felt leaves. Shit!

The viney mass behind her that had seemed so ordinary when she first arrived was apparently not so ordinary after all. It was one of Ivy's "babies" (read: leafy attack dogs) and Catwoman had apparently woken it. It sprung to life, looked her up and down, leaned in and almost seemed to "sniff" her, and then slithered into the lair. Catwoman heard voices. Ivy's was garbled, Matt's was distinct and audible "I take it we have company, We'll have to—"

Suddenly, there was an ear-splitting shriek and before Selina could make a move, Ivy came running at her from the inner lair.

"Catty!" she cried the moment she saw her. And then began the kind of circular walk-around Selina often engaged in with Whiskers when the cat was playful and determined to attack her feet. Ivy was apparently trying to hide _behind_ her –AND to get out the door but –KEEPING Catwoman between her and Clayface –But Catty kept moving – Ivy kept adjusting, Catty kept turning to face her –And so they were circling round and round instead of getting closer to the door–––After several revolutions, a slightly dizzy Catwoman managed to steer an equally dizzy and semi-hysterical Ivy back into the lair…

…where Clayface had resumed his Batman appearance.

"NO!" Ivy shrieked, clutching Catwoman's arm and pointing franticly at the faux crimefighter. "That's not Batman! _That's not Batman!_" she chanted, wrenching Selina's arm like a hunchback trying to ring a cathedral bell. "Catty, Catty," she panted miserably, "He's been coming here all week, ALL WEEK, DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND! _ HE'S NOT BATMAN!_ **_HE'S NOT BATMAN!!_**'

"Of course not, his jaw's too square," Catwoman said dryly.

ClayBat crossed his arms dramatically, the caped crimefighter posing for a "hero shot." His eyes met Catwoman's, and for just a split second she saw nothing so clearly as the impish satisfaction of an actor who'd done it 'his way.' And then, without his moving a muscle, the effect faded and she saw only a pugnacious crimefighter in the typical pose.

"Ladies," he said severely, as edges of his cape lifted on their own and flapped slowly outward, following the walls of the lair until they came together behind the women.

"Catty I can explain about that baby story in the Post," Ivy stammered desperately. "I can explain, I can explain. It wasn't my fault, I didn't mean it. Just get me out of here, Catty. I'll find a way to fix it. Just GET ME OUT OF HERE!"

Batman grinned wickedly, and the cape which now encircled both women pushed and pulled at them until they found themselves in the center of the lair. Ivy whimpered miserably as the left side of the cape splashed suddenly like black water and she again found herself cocooned in a hammock of Clayface slime. In the same instant, the half of the cape which extended around Catwoman condensed and contorted into a handsome chair with carved lion heads in the arms and feet. The now-capeless Batman morphed back into Matt Hagen.

"Just in time, Cat my dear. There's only so much you can do without a real audience. Now, where were we? Oh yes, it was time for an ** _E! True Gotham Story: Poison Ivy, and her mad obsession for the one man she can never have._**"

For the next half-hour, Matt told the story of Ivy's life and loves as he saw them, morphing into Joker, Harley, Two-Face, a giant eggplant, Roxy Rocket, Sly the Bartender, and Ivy herself as the story required. It was "Joker" who made the devastating observation that Ivy had _ Batman_ in her clutches (or so she thought) and could think of nothing better to do with him than sic him on Clayface! Talk about obsession. Why Matt Hagen had become more important to her than killing Joker, or even Batman himself. Just think of it, her every waking thought for how many nights now was Matt Matt Matt Matt Matt. She was obsessed – beyond obsessed, she was fanatically gripped, fixated and infatuated with him. Bewitched, bothered and besotted. Why it was almost like she was _greened_. Ha HA-Yes that was it, Ha ha Haha Ha. It was like greening without the infatuation. Poetic. That's what it was. Ha HA hahaha. Poetry in green.

* * *

Bartholomew spent the last three days finalizing the paperwork: a three month leave of absence, approved by Dr. Arkham and the board despite the critical understaffing, because he made it clear that if it wasn't approved, he would simply quit. One way or the other, he would not be in his office at one o'clock on Monday, Wednesday or Friday listening to Patient J besmirch the good name of Ina Garten. One way or the other, he would spend the next two weeks bicycling through French wine country, ten vineyards in fourteen days, and after that, he would see where life would take him.

There was even the possibility it would not bring him back to Gotham, not ever. He had kept this possibility from the Arkham administrators. It was simpler that way. If he told them now, they would make it very unpleasant. Let them fill his position on staff, however temporarily, and then in a month or two, a registered letter from a man they'd already replaced wouldn't come as such a blow.

No more Patient J. Of all the delights he expected from these next weeks abroad, the lack of Patient J anywhere in his experience was possibly the best.

Now, he had to pack. What did one wear bicycling through the French countryside?

* * *

All that remained after Clayface finished his _E! True Gotham Story _were the threats. He'd been blackballed once because of Poison Ivy. The Rogues didn't want to put up with the psychotic ravings of a queen bitch, so they'd shut him out over a stupid box of potpourri. Not again. He was back and he would not be ostracized again. He would make this very simple for Ivy: She couldn't kill him, harm him, or control him, and her attempts to change that had FAILED. _He_, on the other hand, could snuff her out like that:

He snapped his fingers, transforming his thumb into a doll-size representation of Ivy and his index into a glorpy miniature of himself. The Clay-finger then enveloped the Ivy-thumb which appeared to struggle briefly, then suffocate.

Or that: He snapped again, and this time Clay-finger snapped the Ivy-finger's neck.

Or that: Snap. And Clay-finger punctured Ivy-finger's heart with a shaft of clay.

Not being a _naturally vindictive and bloody-minded killer_, Matt said kindly, he would certainly exhaust ALL the less-drastic options available before resorting to cold-blooded murder. Options such as recreating his E! True Gotham Story at the Iceberg for the enjoyment of all the rogues. And certainly the gang up at Arkham would enjoy seeing how Ivy had conducted herself with Greened Batman. He morphed into Ivy's own form and delivered a few of her more laughable _bon mots_ about nature's chosen vessel, then morphed into Joker, pointed at Ivy and cackled, repeating each word through helpless giggle-fits.

Finally, he resumed his Hagen form, but with slicked black hair, a Clark Gable moustache, dandified hat and white suit that were pure Rhett Butler.

"Now, if you ladies will excuse me," he said with a cocky Southern twang, "The city is full of many things and many people. And I shan't be lonely."

Catwoman stifled her laughter as Matt-Rhett strode out the door, although she didn't _hide_ that she was stifling laughter - which clearly made it worse for ol'Pammy – which is exactly what Selina intended. After Matt-Rhett's magnificent exit, little globules began collecting themselves from around the greenhouse. A bit of goo holding a creepervine over here joined with a drop of green from the "snap you like a twig" demonstration over there. It all gurgled towards the door and both women watched in silence, Ivy because she still wore a slime-gag and Selina because, really, what was there to say? Finally, as the clayblob passed Ivy, the slimy cocoon that surrounded her slid off her body and joined with the rest of the splotchy mass oozing towards the door… Just at the door, it paused. A patch solidified and gave the rosebush a final kick. Then it was gone.

Catwoman looked wonderingly at Ivy.

"What the fuck did you do?" she asked, clearly in awe.

Pamela Isley, for once, had no words.

"Word of advice, Pammy," Catwoman said amiably. "Whatever you did to invite that, don't ever do it again."

* * *

Alfred was not superstitious. Apart from never whistling backstage or saying "Good Luck" on opening night, he was not a superstitious man.

He was a realist.

Before it was just the challenges presented by the regular Wayne Manor timetable in the normal course of batlife. Alfred no sooner chose to put that consideration aside and make an overture with Edith Mason anyway, when Master Bruce became embroiled in this frightful Poison Ivy situation and was laid up for three days. And nights. If Alfred were a superstitious man that would constitute a very bad omen indeed.

So he had postponed the whole idea of… well, a _life_, the very night Master Bruce took to his bed. The next day, he'd gone to Harriman's Gourmet Pantry as usual, planning only to pop into Perdita's Florals on his way out to relay Miss Selina's compliments on the new arrangement. With this topic foremost in his mind, Alfred mentioned Miss Selina in passing to Mr. Harriman, and the latter was quick to praise her with a vehemence Alfred found curious seeing that they had never met, as far as Alfred knew. The source of Mr. Harriman's good opinion quickly became apparent: Miss Selina was unique among the hostesses of Bristol in that she was not following Mrs. Finn's lead (which was actually Monsieur Anatole's lead) wanting him to procure these bizarre chocolate-covered lavender, fennel, and whatnots from _Chocolatière du Panier_ in Marseilles. Mr. Harriman was at his wits end with this wretched French phrasebook. He couldn't guess how many long distance calls he had made, all to no avail, trying to locate this wretched chocolate shop and place an order.

Knowing that Miss Selina spoke fluent French, and also that she was spending an inordinate amount of time at Master Bruce's bedside and was, in Alfred's opinion, well in need of a diversion, he volunteered her linguistic assistance. Within a few hours she had found the shop, obtained a price list and relayed the pertinent information to Mr. Harriman. An hour after that, Mr. Harriman placed his order, again with Miss Selina's gracious assistance, and that, as far as Alfred was concerned, was that.

But now, Mr. Harriman was so grateful that he'd presented Alfred with a gift basket brimming with gourmet delectables: there was roast quail stuffed with wild rice risotto, double cream brie with baked apples and grapes, smoked salmon with a caper dill aioli, and Mr. Harriman's own house specialty: lemon almond shortbread. Alfred also could not help but notice that there were two portions of each delicacy, and that the basket was tied with a delicate pink bow of the shade Miss Mason wore almost daily.

Alfred coughed his thanks, took the basket, and headed across the street to Perdita's Florals.

* * *

It is not in the nature of cats to worry about a mouse that had it coming. Poison Ivy was no exception.

Selina had been torn as to what exactly she would do with Ivy at the end of the evening. Handing her over to the police in batcuffs was certainly out of the question. Even if there had been hard evidence of kidnapping or conspiracy to commit murder, Catwoman didn't care about such things. She didn't care about laws being broken and – the angle Bruce kept harping on – she certainly shouldn't care about Batman being greened. But Arkham, Arkham was another matter. Since Ivy had very conveniently sunk into a state of shell-shocked catatonia, Arkham was the natural place to bring her. Have her committed for her own safety, seeing as she couldn't function. Selina guessed it was some kind of shock reaction: the power trip she'd been on with Batman, then having it all pulled out from under her (Meow). Plunging into the depth of humiliation, hours of Hagen with no ability to respond (Meow). And then a nice little epilogue of threats, again with no chance to respond. Something in Pammy's high-strung psyche must've just snapped, and that was very, very meow.

She did pull it together for a few minutes in the car, not enough to really notice she was in Catwoman's Jaguar but enough express a few thoughts on the night's events so far. She seemed almost _grateful_ to Selina, which was pretty damned disturbing. While Catwoman never got around to shredding Ivan and introducing him, piece by piece, to Ivy's nasal cavity, she had gone into the evening prepared for Pammy to realize they weren't pals. She was prepared for Ivy to realize that Clayface and Catwoman were working together. Instead, Ivy had been hysterical when Catwoman showed up and she'd run to her without thinking. Now that it was over and she did have time to think clearly (comparatively speaking), she _still_ seemed to see Catty's arrival as a completely separate event. She just assumed that Catwoman came to her about something unconnected to Clayface or Batman – and that it was very big of Catty to put those issues aside in light of the greater calamity with "the Walking Dung Heap."

As for the dung heap, Ivy had a tendency to blame everything wrong _in her life and in the world_ on the one thing or the one person she hated most at that moment. Often it was men, sometimes the whole human race or the whole animal kingdom, sometimes just logging companies. Occasionally Batman was the source of all ills, more often it was Joker, but tonight it was, without question, Matt Hagen. The happy result of that little blindspot was that Ivy no longer seemed to think she ever had Batman in her thrall. She knew Bats had turned into Clayface tonight, she knew (probably from the lines he'd quoted) that it had been him and not Batman on previous nights, and so she somehow, in her all-clay-is-evil/all-evil-is-clay mindset, assumed it had been Clayface deceiving her the entire time. That was a lucky break; it eliminated the possibility of awkward or dangerous questions down the line when Pammy became lucid.

Not that Pammy becoming lucid was much of a concern, not any time soon.

With no questions hanging over them about how Batman got free from Ivy's influence and no suspicions about Catwoman's involvement, Selina felt free to probe about that one chance sentence which had nothing to do with Batman, greened or otherwise.

"You said something about a story in the Post… about a baby?"

There was a gurgling whimper, a hoarse throaty rattle, and that was the last sound Ivy made until they reached Arkham.

The fact that Ivy was unable to speak and, indeed, seemed barely aware of her surroundings, made the check-in process fairly simple. Catwoman brought her to the front desk and gave a reasonably truthful account of having gone to see Ivy at her greenhouse, being met with hysterical ravings and terrified cries for protection which had now settled into this catatonic daze, and then, once the nightclerk was past the point of no return copying information from Ivy's existing file onto a new admission form, Catwoman left.

Returning to the parking lot, she saw a row of orange cones beside her car, sectioning off a patch of fresh asphalt.

"Hi Matt," she said with a smile.

He glurped into his human form and grinned.

"Was it that obvious?" he asked with a blush.

Selina pointed out that the asphalt was not wet when she pulled up, and they seldom did work like that in the middle of the night. Matt laughed and invited her out for a drink. He didn't really eat and drink, of course, but it was the usual way to celebrate after a performance. If they'd missed last call at the Iceberg, there were enough all night diners in the city… Selina agreed – but vetoed the diner. Instead she wanted him to meet someone. She said there was plenty to drink "at the penthouse."

* * *

The Dvorak Cello Concerto played on the sleek Bang & Olufsen while Bruce poured a drink that looked like vintage cognac but contained no alcohol. He took his glass to the window, fingered the control to remotely activate the sprinklers throughout the penthouse, stared out at the twinkling Gotham nightscape…and worried.

It was taking too long. Catwoman and Clayface were hardly experienced in takedown efforts of this kind, but even so, it should not be taking this long. Catwoman was in no way prepared to handle Clayface if he turned on her. It was an unsound plan from start to finish and he never should have allowed it. What was worse, Bruce Wayne had committed to being at home in the penthouse tonight. That meant Batman couldn't go out himself to check on the situation or monitor developments from the satellite cave beneath the Wayne Tower. Theoretically, he could access the Batcomputer from his PC in the study, but he didn't want to risk it. Clayface was due to "pay a visit," and you could never be completely sure Clayface hadn't already arrived. Bruce felt he should maintain the charade of "_Bruce Wayne enjoying a leisurely evening in his penthouse_," no matter how empty the penthouse seemed to be.

At last the phone rang and Barbara, forbidden to contact him via OraCom or to say anything compromising, said only that "Jerry A's just logged that delivery you asked me to check on." Bruce permitted himself a half-twitch of relief. Ivy was in Arkham, even if he didn't have the satisfaction of putting her there himself. It was better than nothing. He wanted to press for details: if Ivy was admitted alone, if Catwoman brought her in, if Clayface was with her, if there were criminal charges or if it was a civil commitment, if anyone was injured, on and on. There was no end to his questions, but he didn't dare prolong the call. Oracle could only know Ivy was admitted once someone at Arkham entered it into their computer system, as in _ after_ all the paperwork was completed. Catwoman and Clayface could have left long before that; they could be arriving at any time. So he waited, sipped his drink, and pretended to listen to the music as his eyes riveted on the window.

Before long, there was movement on the horizon. Distinct, graceful, darkly purple movement Bruce had seen so many times, rhythmically breaking the lights behind it, becoming rounder and more enticing as it came closer… Catwoman.

Catwoman _and friend_ in this case, which wasn't nearly as enticing. Bruce waited as the figures grew larger, landed on the terrace, and laughed at some remark he couldn't hear. As the glass doors slid open, it became apparent they were laughing at a potted plum tree on the edge of the balcony.

"Honey, I'm home," Selina purred, casually peeling off her gloves as she sashayed up to him and imparted a kiss on his cheek. "Bruce, Matt; Matt, Bruce," she added casually. Then she flitted off to the bar, pulled off her mask, and started fussing with glasses, bottles and ice.

"What's your poison, Matthew?" she asked with a naughty grin.

"Ehh," he managed, stalling verbally as his brain tried to process the layers of feline logic inside the question/joke. "Whatever you're having," he said at last. Then he confided quietly to Bruce "I don't actually drink. Guess she doesn't realize…"

Bruce had recognized the look: man-befuddled-by-felinity. The whole situation was intensely awkward and intensely bizarre, even by Gotham standards. But Selina was so completely oblivious to the mind-warping strangeness, it created a bond of sorts between Bruce and Matt.

"Nice view," the latter said, taking a shot at normalcy through small talk, "My place in Malibu had a nice view like that." Of course his view was the ocean. The cityscape was more like the view Luthor had from his penthouse and offices. The parallel made Matt uncomfortable, but he hid his suspicions in a worldly meeting-the-backers smile.

Selina brought his drink. He took it and they sat. Matt made a polite pretense of drinking the martini, just as he had with groupies at the Iceberg, and they retold and relived the night's triumphs. Selina was a good costar, free with praise for Matt's performance – but also a bit miffed that he'd done the job too well. He left her so little to play with. There was no Day of the Locusts, no Flytrap Clawing, no Weedkiller in the SuperSoaker (which he had to admit sounded entertaining). Bruce said little during all of this, of course, but for a civilian he seemed to enjoy the stories. Matt recalled that Wayne had been greened himself way back when, so his appreciation was understandable. Plus, of course, Selina's enthusiasm was contagious.

After an hour or so of this easy reminiscing, something changed. Matt had that "size-up" feeling again, like he was in the presence of a studio suit. He looked curiously at Selina, but then realized the feeling was coming from Bruce.

"So, cut to the chase" Matt said abruptly. "What do you want?"

Rather than the usual denials, Bruce asked Selina to leave them alone. He then described a research initiative the Wayne Foundation funded at Hudson University several years before. He rattled off the credentials of the scientists involved, exactly like a suit describing the director, screenwriters, and f/x wizards they were lining up for a new film. The only thing Wayne was vague about was the why. He said the Foundation was asked to fund the project, asked "by the city." Matt asked for clarification on that – twice. The City could mean anything: the Mayor, the cops, the cops fronting for the Bat… Each time he asked for details, that studio size-up feeling returned. And each time the size-up feeling returned, Matt looked back at the window, that breathtaking view of Gotham that was so much like Luthor's view of Metropolis.

"Look, you want me to star as a lab rat in your science project," he said incredulously, "and you're not even telling me who's producing?"

"All the funding is from the Wayne Foundation," Bruce repeated.

"Yeah, I get that," Matt answered. "You're signing the check. You're 'the money.' But that's _finance_. That's not being the Producer. Producer is the guy who really started this, puts everything together, including you and your money. Who in 'the city' wants to—"

"Hagen," Bruce interrupted sharply. "Forget what everyone else wants, what you _assume_ everyone wants and they're not saying. What do _you_ want? Selina tells me you went to Luthor. _You_ wanted research like this. You wanted an alternative to what your life has become."

"That was a long time ago," Matt answered, looking down at the drink in his hand like he wished it was more than a prop.

"So was this," Bruce replied. "Dr. Coi is at Star Labs now. Bryce is at Princeton. Phipps went to Johnson and Johnson. But the research still exists, and we can get the panel back together or assemble a new one. If you want it. If you're willing to cooperate."

"You want me to 'cooperate' just for my own satisfaction, huh? Just for the one in a million shot they maybe can find a way to make this…" He paused, staring at the back of his hand and as he turned it, let it morph into a gray glorpy mass. "…make this into a regular body again? I go along with this for _nothing_, just like that?"

"No, not 'just like that,'" Bruce said, a cold directness in his eye. "There's a price. In the morning a Foundation lawyer will go with you to the District Attorney. You'll make a full confession of all the crimes you committed as Clayface and accept a negotiated sentence of community service bound to this research. Your participation will be monitored and reported to their office. If you up and disappear in six months, it's no different than a jailbreak. Understood?"

"Are you _SERIOUS_?" Matt sputtered, losing the definition on his hair and fingers in his shock.

Then, after a hard silent glare which seemed to be the only reply he was going to get, Matt Hagen grinned.

"Well, Selina was right about one thing, you're _nothing_ like Luthor."

The glare softened a touch.

"Do we have a deal?" Bruce asked.

Matt's grin widened.

"I take it back. You're a little like Luthor."

* * *

Glad to help, buddy. We've got stick together where the ladies are concerned. Lovely to look at, delightful to hold, but make the wrong move and you're out in the cold.

Jean Paul chuckled. It felt good to get an objective opinion. And it was good advice too. The very fact that he didn't know where things stood with Helena was a pretty good sign that there was no relationship to be wondering about. He should go forth and find himself a lovely lady he didn't have to wonder about. And lovely ladies were everywhere. Sure, he had an obligation to Azrael, but Az could battle evil anywhere. There were lots of cities out there. Take Metropolis: Superman seemed nice, and no Catwoman. Keystone was cool: lots of history, great cheesesteaks, no Catwoman. Seattle: Promised Land of gourmet coffee and software development, no Catwoman. Or even, as his new on-line poker buddy suggested, Star City: beautiful scenery, even more beautiful women… and, Jean Paul added in his own mind, _no Catwoman_.

Very, very good advice.

_Thanks again,_ Jean Paul typed. _And good luck at that Five Diamonds tournament next month._

* * *

Thanks again. And good luck at that Five Diamonds tournament next month. the nameless poker player answered.

Roy Harper smiled. Seemed like a nice guy, just way too passive where the ladies are concerned. If there's one thing Roy knew, it was how to set a guy straight on the lovely ladies. After all, Cheshire hadn't killed him yet.

* * *

After saying goodnight and escorting Hagen to the elevator, Bruce watched on a hidden camera as the Matt Hagen-shaped body left the elevator. Whether that was _all_ of him or if he'd left some part of himself behind remained to be seen. Bruce waited, then conducted a visual inspection of the elevator, foyer, living room and terrace. Nothing _seemed_ amiss, which cleared the way for a thorough spectral sweep in the morning. Bruce himself would not be present; Tim and Cassie would conduct the sweep, wearing the uniform of a cleaning service, just in case. Until that scan came back clean, no one would be permitted to speak freely in the penthouse, and access to the satellite cave through the elevator would remain disabled.

Satisfied, Bruce went to find Selina. He knew she'd gone into the bedroom earlier, and he opened the door with his finger to his lips, intending to preempt any careless chitchat. Unfortunately, she was in no position to see this silent signal. She was down on all fours, head vanished under the bed, presumably cracking the ancient floorsafe under there. Suppressing a lip-twitch, he tapped her on the back. She started and banged her head on the bed, then called him a jackass.

"I was looking for the fourth bar," she began, rubbing the back of her head.

"It's not there. And I don't want to talk here. Let's go home," he said flatly. She glanced back at the safe and back at him. "I haven't used that safe in years," he added. "Let's go."

"What about Matt, did he go for it?"

Bruce sighed, wondering what it was about that woman's mind that didn't process anything he said in front of a locked safe. '_I don't want to talk here'_ was a clear enough phrase, wasn't it? Rather like _ Felony burglary occurs when a person "knowingly enters or remains unlawfully in a building with intent to commit a crime therein."_

"Hagen agreed in principle," Bruce said curtly. "I have my doubts as to whether he'll go through with it."

Selina sighed and shook her head. He hurried her out, and down to the private garage below the tower, where Alfred was waiting with the Bentley. As they pulled out of the garage, Bruce quickly ran down the topics he hadn't wanted to discuss in the unsecured penthouse: He used the floorsafe years ago to store a spare costume when he lived in the tower. The fourth gold bar was at home in the manor, in the bottom of the safe in the bedroom, because they'd mentioned that safe during the Walapang conversation; he expected that to be the first one she found. Not that it mattered now, but the fourth clue was Alfred's housekeeping records. For some reason the weekly bill for a local florist just jumped, although it's been constant for years.

"That would be a new flower arrangement in the dining room," Selina mentioned, glancing up to the front of the car and catching Alfred's eye in the rearview mirror. As usual, Selina couldn't tell if he could hear them from the driver's seat or not, or if he was simply playing the discreet chauffeur, so she had answered for him. Then she added, "And the fourth bar might not matter to you but it matters to me. Property taxes on the Catitat next month."

Bruce gave her a strange sideways glance as the downtown buildings flashed by outside the window. To him, the gold as her 'compensation' 'for the Catitat' was part of the cover story to set Project Walapang in motion. Surely if she needed anything for the Cat…

Walapang. The word stuck in Bruce's mind like one of Ivy's thorns. He turned back to the window, watching the buildings whizzing past his eyes, the streets, the people who were still out, all going about their nightly routines… even this close to dawn there were people on the street… The city. His city. For over a week now, he hadn't been out there, protecting these people, protecting their way of life. For over a week, he hadn't been able to… All because of Ivy and her ridiculous…

Walapang. Selina had come through beautifully, following the clues, freeing him from Ivy's grip. That first conversation, that day in the cave, when she first noticed the two bats, he'd made such an effort to include Catwoman in his work. Because of the crisis, because of that dimension hopping nonsense. She'd been in danger and all he could do was watch. Now here they were again. She'd gone after Ivy, _she_ had, with Clayface. In danger again with uncontrollable superpowers and, and he had done nothing but stay behind and… wait. He knew he could have gone with her… _should_ have gone with her. Sure, he was still struggling with the aftereffects of Ivy's control, his mind still somewhat cloudy, his body unsure. But he would have worked past it; he would have pushed all of that aside in order to do what he had to do. He would have persevered. He always did. But she'd convinced him…

Then there was the Hagen irony. For nearly a week he'd resisted Ivy and what she wanted him to do to Clayface. With Selina, he'd agreed in less than an hour. No air freshener required. Just "Special Foundation Initiative 4; why is it here if not for this?" …Of course it wasn't the same thing, but still, in a way…

In one motion, he clicked a switch on the door's armrest and spun in his seat to face Selina. The opaque privacy shield that separated the driver's seat from the back of the car slid silently into place as he stared into her deep green eyes.

"Something wrong?" she asked.

"Yes."

He couldn't say what but something was wrong. Everything was wrong.

"What?" she asked.

As they crossed the Kane Memorial Bridge out of town, the faintest hint of orange crested on the horizon. It was almost dawn. It would be full light by the time they reached the manor. There was no possibility of getting changed and working in a quick patrol. Another night lost before he could do anything.

"Bruce, what's wrong?"

Damn her.

"If you need anything for the Catitat, there's a checkbook in the desk in the study," he muttered.

Damn her. What was wrong with him? _'Throw money at it'_ never solved a single problem, he'd learned that those first disastrous months at the Foundation. What was wrong with him? What was _really_ wrong? He turned back to the window, staring out into the predawn air. They continued home in what promised to be excruciatingly strained silence…

…except Selina's playful felinity had a way of shrugging off his foreboding silences, and as they passed the final turn-off for the Bristol Country Club, she declared that if he was sufficiently recovered to resume "brooding Battitude" then he was sufficiently recovered for "a little Walapang Q & A." Impossible woman.

"So why me?" she began crisply. "All the 'detective' stuff… it's so—"

"Not your _kink_," he finished for her. "I know. But I didn't have a lot of options. You were the best choice."

"How was _I_…?"

He paused for a moment, the pain and frustration of being under Ivy's spell still fresh in his mind.

"Remember your shock sensors on the painting at the museum? You had to ease the frame off the hanger, starting small, then gradually building until you couldn't go any farther, but by then you had enough give to work with. Same thing with Ivy's commands. I couldn't say or do anything actively against her. And Batman was specifically ordered not to give any sort of hints or signals to Robin or other crimefighting 'associates.' Not that I would have, Ivy's instructions or not - there were too many variables. I didn't know how far she'd gone; it was unlikely from her behavior, but she could have already had Robin in her thrall. Or any of the other males. So Tim was out, Dick was out. Jean Paul, Clark, even Alfred. I couldn't be sure of any of them. And worse, I couldn't trust myself. So I needed a female and with Ivy's instructions, I couldn't go to any of Batman's female 'associates.' But you're a _thief_, and that was wiggle room. But I was _also_ ordered not to speak or hint to the people I was close to in my private life…"

He stopped and sighed, reliving layers of frustration while the car continued on to where the public road met the edge of the Wayne property.

"There are times, Kitten, I wish you were a little more 'divided' than you are. Talking to Catwoman is still talking to Selina. There's no real division. When you came into the garden out of costume, I didn't know if I could go through with it."

"Gee, so sorry my lack of multiple personality disorder made things tricky for you," she grumbled.

Bruce's lip twitched.

"It really did. But in costume or out, you're still a thief. That meant I could lock everything away, make _every_ effort to keep each clue hidden and secured where you couldn't _possibly_ get at it, and still know that somehow, you _would_ get your hands on it."

"Paws," she corrected.

Bruce shook his head with a disbelieving smirk.

"Impossible woman," he murmured.

"Meow."

"And that's what I needed," he continued, a small twitch tugging at the corner of his mouth as he glanced directly at her," An 'impossible woman.' I needed someone I knew, when it all came to a head, wouldn't follow any orders I gave."

* * *

Epilogue: The Final Blueprint

* * *

Bruce couldn't sleep. He told himself it was the inevitable result of sedation and detox, but he also knew he was lying to himself. He rolled over, stroked Selina's hair once, and crawled out of bed. He reached for the kimono he normally wore up from the cave when he changed after patrol. He put it on, padded silently down the stairs, and made his way to the study. He passed the desk in the lefthand drawer of which lay the checkbook he'd told Selina to use for Catitat expenses. He set the time on the clock to 10:47, opening the passageway to the cave. He made his way slowly down the stone stairs, across the main chamber and into the trophy room, past the giant penny and the dinosaur, past the case with a freeze ray, question marks, and whip handle… and into the hidden alcove. Not even Alfred knew the alcove existed.

Bruce's fingers punched the keypad and turned the dial automatically…

It was necessary. The safe was his and his alone; not Dick, not Tim, not Clark, not even Alfred knew about it. It was the only place he could hide something in the cave where Alfred couldn't accidentally find it, and with that sudden jump in the florist bill, that was a risk Bruce couldn't afford to take. But now, now it was out there. Selina knew about it and that was just… a little too personal. Even after all they'd shared, all they'd been through, this was…

He removed the gold bar and set it aside, an object of no importance that had no place among these other items. He opened the jewelry box, touched the broken string of pearls and the bloodstained wallet. He withdrew the stack of folders and paperwork and checked each item, handling each with special care:

A sealed Mylar evidence bag containing both a birth certificate and death certificate for Jason Todd.  
A similar sealed bag containing a vial of poison and fibers from the costume of a villain called "Obeah Man," both tagged to the kidnapping of Jack and Janet Drake, as a result of which Tim's mother died and Jack Drake was left in a coma.  
Beneath these, a small stack of file folders and manila envelopes stacked together: The original police report and complete police files on his parents' murders, the original police reports and files on Barbara Gordon's shooting by the Joker, official documents setting Bruce Wayne as the legal guardian of Richard Grayson and the later, newer paperwork making Dick his adopted son.  
Official documentation and results of a psychological review for one Jean Paul Valley and a lengthy, chronological history of the Order of St. Dumas.  
Not in a folder or envelope, but lying in the pile by itself, was an official adoption application for Timothy Drake, half completed, attached to a medical report on Jack Drake's waking from a coma several months following his kidnapping.  
And finally, on the very bottom… he paused, his heartbeat pounding in his ears as his eyes scanned the official document in his hand.

The original police report on the car accident that killed Selina Kyle's parents. Attached to it, a page of handwritten notes, Bruce's notes, the results of his own investigation confirming that it had, indeed, been no more than a tragic accident.

Bruce checked the paperwork a second time, then a third. He was reasonably certain the files and folders had not been touched. He replaced each individually, then returned them to the safe and set the wooden jewelry box reverently on top. He closed the door, depressed the pressure switch, and reset the combination.

Not that it mattered. She knew about the safe now. She'd cracked it once; she could crack it again. Of course he could always add a fingerprint or a retinal scan – but what was the point? They had biometric locks all over the diamond district and Catwoman could get around all of them. That ability to penetrate the most carefully guarded perimeter, to slip past the most rigorous defenses and sidestep the most sensitive triggers, to let no nuisance of a lock…or a law… or a crimefighter… come between her and her prize, it was all a part of Catwoman. And now she'd been in this most private and personal…

Damn her.

* * *

© 2006, Chris Dee

Only time will tell what's been set in motion by "Project Walapang."

In the meantime, it seems quite a lot of Gothamites are leaving town.  
Who will come back and with whom? And what could that mean for Joker and Harley?  
**Cat-Tale #48**  
**Amuse Bouche  
**-- — -- — -- -- — -- — --


End file.
